INCONVENIENT
The science that Al Gore doesn't
want you to know
INCONVENIENT FACTS
The science that Al Gore doesn’t want
you to know
Gregory Wrightstone
SILVER CROWN
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Silver Crown Productions, LLC
Cover design by Darren J. Miller
© 2017 Gregory Wrightstone
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ISBN: 9781545614334
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Website: inconvenientfacts.xyz
In memory of our son,
Zachary Daniel Wrightstone,
September 14, 1988 - February 2, 2017
Taken too soon
And dedicated to our granddaughter
Chloe Choi
born April 27, 2017
In the hope that she will grow up in a rational world
One life ends and another begins
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the colleagues who made this book possible. Though
they had diverse talents, they shared my goal of finding the truth and
presenting the facts, science and data in a clear and lucid manner.
The generous contribution of time and linguistic talent from Gordon
Tomb was crucial to the finished product. His wordsmithing of my
sometimes-inelegant phrasing certainly made this a much more readable
and sensible work. Not long into the process he told me “Greg, I had
suspected for years that we were being lied to about this, but I had no idea
just how pervasive it really was.” At that point, he was hooked.
It was a pleasure and a joy to bring Christopher Monckton of
Brenchley onto the editing team. His contributions were impactful and
greatly improved the book via additions of his technical knowledge and his
insight into the political machinations promoting the “party line.”
Robert Burger provided great help in formatting and excellent
improvements in the figures. Others providing an assist with editing and
graphics were Christopher Humphrey, Justin Skaggs, Sarah Hart and
Alison Kissel.
It is not entirely certain that this book would have been completed
without the support and encouragement of my brother, Bob Wrightstone.
He always provided an honest assessment to keep me on track with my
goal of reaching the common man. In writing a book dealing with
scientific matters, it is all too easy to go “deep in the weeds” on the
technical aspects and Bob was not afraid to remind me of that fact when I
strayed from my goal.
Special thanks for design help and moral support to dear friends Jeff
and Gwen Steigerwalt. Their help and backing of the project were crucial
to its success.
The patience and support of my wife Julia were remarkable and for that
I am grateful.
Special thanks to Lucy the Cat who kept me company and never once
complained... Well, maybe once.
Foreword
Great is truth and mighty above all things—even in
climate science
By The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
The Roman poet Virgil wrote of the scientist: “Felix qui potuit rerum
cognoscere causas: “Happy the one who finds the why of things.” Science
was originally known in the West as philosophia naturalis —the love of the
nature of wisdom that is love of the wisdom of nature. The noble
philosophical mission of “the seeker after truth”, as the Iraqi
mathematician and empiricist al-Haytham beautifully described the
scientist, was to discern what is so in nature and why it is so, and to answer
the question of the Greek philosopher Anaximander: how to distinguish
what is from what is not ?
The objective of the endeavors of the man of science, then, is precisely
that of the man of religion: to discern the truth. Jesus Christ—the
unsuccessful and yet ultimately triumphant defendant in history’s most
celebrated show trial—declared His mission thus: “To this end was I born,
and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the
truth.” There, in a sentence, is a noble mission for every true natural
philosopher to adopt as his own. Too many climate scientists have
abandoned that mission, and they have done so at great cost to the
reputation of science itself.
Pontius Pilate’s reply to the defendant was the great question that
underlies all genuine scientific questions: “What is the truth?” There,
before him, was the One who could have given the answer, but,
notoriously, Pilate did not stay for it.
Similarly do today’s governing elite respond when they are confronted
with the Inconvenient Facts piled upon Inconvenient Facts in this book,
establishing that global warming is not occurring at anything like the
predicted rate, that the succession of exotic natural disasters luridly
foretold by failed climate models are not happening, and that the cost of
solving non-existent man-made global warming is orders of magnitude
greater than the far lesser cost of doing nothing today and adapting to
warmer weather—if ever it comes.
They close their ears to the truth and walk away. Hear no truth, see no
truth, speak no truth.
The lavishly-funded clique of totalitarian pseudo-scientists who crafted
the scare of scares and then peddled the scam of scams—Professor Momer
justly calls climate alarmism “the greatest lie ever told”—bear witness not
unto the truth but unto the Party Line, which they have branded as “the
overwhelming scientific consensus”; a consensus which, as Mr.
Wrightstone explains with admirable lucidity and concision in these pages,
does not exist and would have no scientific relevance even if it did.
Science, as al-Haytham could have told these creatures, is not done by
mere head count: “The seeker after truth does not put his faith in any
consensus, however venerable or widespread. Instead he questions what he
has learned of it, applying to it his hard-won scientific knowledge, and he
inspects and inquires and investigates and checks and checks and checks
again. The road to the truth is long and hard, but that is the road we must
follow.”
Gregory Wrightstone is a man of true science, firmly in the tradition of
al-Haytham. His mission in this book is not to prop up some failed Party
Line willy-nilly, nor—on the other hand—unthinkingly to oppose that
Party Line merely on the basis that it is as scientifically disagreeable as it
is histrionically hysterical. His mission is to distinguish what is from what
is not in the climate debate. He has splendidly succeeded.
It has been a pleasure to play a small part in editing Inconvenient
Facts. The reader will find the book easy to read, logically structured,
clearly expressed, well illustrated, compellingly supported by evidence
and, above all, authoritative. This is not an academic work. For one thing,
it is written in plain English. Yet it is as comprehensively referenced as
any scientific book, and its conclusions are more reliable than those of the
small number of “scientific” papers about climate change that the
mainstream news media find expedient to mention.
One of the many remarkable things about this book is how startlingly
numerous, relevant and compelling are the Inconvenient Facts that it
presents, and yet how unbecomingly few of these facts have ever appeared
in any mainstream news medium.
The voters cannot be fairly or fully informed where the news media,
long captured by hate-filled, totalitarian enemies of the liberty and
prosperity of the West and of the democracy that is the guarantor of both,
will not fairly or fully report both sides of issues such the climate question.
Their shameful failure is Mr. Wrightstone’s shining opportunity. His book
is necessary, precisely because the usual news outlets behave as though
they were run by the KGB Disinformation Directorate or by Herr
Goebbels’ Reichs-propagandaamt. Whenever the Party Line runs counter
to the truth, they do not report the truth at all—except occasionally to
mischaracterize it sneeringly as “denialism”. Mr. Wrightstone, by contrast,
reports the truth whichever way it points, and leaves the reader to make up
his own mind.
In the long debate about the influence of Man on climate, the profiteers
of doom have sullenly adhered to the Party Line not because it is true (for
this book shows beyond reasonable doubt that it is not true) but because,
false though the Party Line be, they find it socially convenient, politically
expedient and, above all, financially profitable.
One of the two principles of natural justice recognized in the law of the
English-speaking countries is Audiatur et altera pars — “Let both sides be
fairly heard”. Given that on this, as on many issues, the news media no
longer allow the skeptical side of the case to be heard, well researched,
clearly written, beautifully presented and, above all, fact-packed books
such as Inconvenient Facts are absolutely essential to the very survival of
democracy, to the restoration of true science, and to the ultimate triumph
of objective truth.
Monckton of Brenchley
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
List of Figures
Introduction: Climate Science and the Non-Expert Problem
I. Global Warming — The Basics
1. Greenhouse Gases — Our Security Blanket
Summary — Greenhouse Gases
2. Carbon Dioxide — The Foundation of Life, the Food of Plants
C0 2 : The Basics
Earth’s Carbon Dioxide History
Is 400 PPM Really a C0 2 Tipping Point?
The Social Benefits of Increasing Carbon
Summary — C0 2 and Humankind
3. Temperature — A Question of Degree
The Hockey-Stick Graph and ‘Unprecedented’ Global Warming
Why the ‘Hockey-Stick’ Graph Matters
Modern Instrumental Data
Some Important Charts
Stepping Millions of Years Back in Time
Climate Models: Accurate, Inaccurate or Useless?
Winter’s Coming — Is Another Ice Age on its Way?
Climate and Culture: Very Good and Very Bad
Summary
II. Apocalypse? No! — Climate Apocalypse Myths
“97% Consensus” — What Consensus?
Water, Water Everywhere — How Droughts are Declining
Forest Fires — Fanning the Flames of Needless Panic
Famine: The Best Solution is More C0 2 and Increasing Temperature
Heat and Life, Cold and Death
In a Whirl About Tornadoes
Hurricanes — Politicizing Tragedy
Polar Bears are Doing Just Fine, Thank You
Ocean Acidity — Climate pHraud
Sea-Level Rise — King Canute Couldn’t Stop It — Nor Can We
Summary — The Benefits of Principled Inaction
List of Inconvenient Facts
References
List of Figures
Figure 1-1: The greenhouse effect
Figure 1-2: The contribution of greenhouse gases to global warming
Figure 1-3: Less global warming for each additional 50 parts-per-million-by-
volume of C0 2 concentration
Figure 1-4: Gases in the atmosphere, excluding water vapor
Figure 1-5: Sources of man-made C0 2 emissions
Figure 1-6: Pounds of C0 2 emitted, per million British Thermal Units (BTU, i.e.,
energy output)
Figure 1-7: C0 2 emissions by country, 2014
Figure 1-8: Mauna Loa C0 2 concentration, 1958 - 2017
Figure 1-9: Global man-made C0 2 emissions
Figure 1-10: 100,000 years of C0 2 data from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
Figure 1-11: 400,000 years of C0 2 data from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
Figure 1-12: The dangerous 140-million-year decline in C0 2
Figure 1-13: Carbon Dioxide—600 Million Years of Data
Figure 1-14: Average C0 2 concentrations in 11 geological periods
Figure 1-15: Crop yield growth and cash benefit with 300 ppm more C0 2
Figure 1-16: Hubert Lamb’s temperature graph of the past 1,100 years
Figure 1-17: The Mann-made hockey stick
Figure 1-18: Satellite measured global warming since 1979 : <0.5 °C (0.9 °F)
Figure 1-19: Thermometer data show a temperature increase of 0.85°C (1.5°F)
1850-2017.
Figure 1-20: Temperature vs. C0 2 (1850-2013)
Figure 1-21: Stable or falling temperatures prevailed in most of the period 1945
-2016
Figure 1-22: An inconvenient pause: 18 years of no warming yet C0 2 increased
Figure 1-23: For 33 postwar years, C0 2 rose quickly but temperature fell.
Figure 1-24: Greater than 300 years of warming in central England from 1695 -
2017
Figure 1-25: 200 years of glacial retreat
Figure 1-26: Greater than 200 years of sea-level rise
Figure 1-27: 2,000 years of temperature data
Figure 1-28: The ups and downs of temperature over the past 800,000 years
Figure 1-29: The ups and downs of temperature over the past 400,000 years
Figure 1-30: 10,000 years of blessed warmth
Figure 1-31: Five earlier warming periods had higher rates of warming than
today.
Figure 1-32: 3.5 million years of declining temperature
Figure 1-33: For 65 million years, the weather was warmer than today.
Figure 1-34: Four billion years of temperature data
Figure 1-35: Icehouse to hothouse fluctuations
Figure 1-36: Global warming predicted by models compared with real-world
warming
Figure 1-37: 3,500 years of falling temperature
Figure 1-38: Icy problems ahead for more than 120 million in North America
alone
Figure 1-39: 4,000 years of temperature-driven cultural advances and retreats
Figure 11-1: The global warming petition that 31,000 scientists signed
Figure 11-2: United States drought monitor
Figure 11-3: Thanks to our changing climate, much of the world is greening.
Figure 11-4: Palmer drought-severity index of mean drought conditions, 1895 -
2015
Figure 11-5: Percentage of United States very wet vs. very dry, 1895 - 2017
Figure 11-6: Percentage of the globe in drought, June 1983 to June 2012
Figure 11-7: Global frequency of severe, persistent droughts, vs. temperature
change and C0 2 emissions
Figure 11-8: Long-term changes in aridity in western North America
Figure 11-9: More C0 2 , but fewer forest fires
Figure 11-10:Global burned area by decade
Figure 11-11: How green is my planet? C0 2 is making it greener.
Figure ll-12:Trend in length of growing season (1981 -2006)
Figure 11-13:World grain production, C0 2 concentration and temperature, 1961
-2014
Figure ll-14:Bushels of grain per acre harvested worldwide, 1936/37 -2016/17
Figure 11-15:C0 2 emissions go up, up goes U.S. corn production
Figure 11-16:U.S. corn feeds cars, not people, 1980/81 - 2016/17
Figure ll-17:Nature, not C0 2 emissions, drives heatwaves
Figure 11-18:Up goes C0 2 concentration, down go heat waves
Figure 11-19: In Alabama peak daily temperature fell from 1883-2014
Figure 11-20:Cold weather, not hot weather, is the real killer
Figure 11-21 :Warmer weather, yet fewer deaths from warmer weather
Figure 11-22:U.S. annual extreme-weather deaths and death rates tumble
Figure 11-23:Good news—cold is killing fewer Britons
Figure ll-24:The more the global warming, the fewer the predicted deaths from
temperature
Figure ll-25:As temperature dropped, U.K. deaths increased—and vice versa.
Figure ll-26:Tornadoes world distribution
Figure 11-27:Severe tornadoes (F 3+) are less frequent than 50 years ago.
Figure 11-28:2016—Lowest number of tornadoes according to NOAA
Figure 11-29:11.S. tornado deaths per million population
Figure ll-30:The Fujita tornado scale
Figure 11-31:Cherry-picked trends in North Atlantic hurricane power
Figure ll-32:The true long-term trend in North Atlantic hurricanes PDI
Figure 11-33: Frequency of global hurricanes and major hurricanes
Figure 11-34:Global tropical storm and hurricane frequency is falling
Figure 11-35: Hurricane frequency fell for more than 250 years
Figure ll-36:There are almost four times as many polar bears as in 1960.
Figure ll-37:Twelve of 13 regional polar bear populations are thriving.
Figure 11-38: Polar bears thriving in high ice-loss areas
Figure 11-39: Male polar bear weight comparison of the two populations
Figure 11-40:Academia on acid: papers about the “acid” ocean, 2001-2015
Figure 11-41 :pH values of common substances
Figure ll-42:Too pHew data points for linkage
Figure 11-43:7,000 years of ocean pH in the South China Sea, and C0 2
Figure 11-44: Reconstructed pH history of SW Pacific reef, 1708 - 1988
Figure 11-45: Limestone was deposited when the C0 2 concentration was
extremely high.
Figure 11-46:Ordovician Black River carbonates laid down when C0 2 was 12
times today’s concentration
Figure 11-47:20,000-year sea level reconstruction
Figure 11-48: More than 200 years of sea-level rise
Figure ll-49:Sea-level rise predictions are failing
Figure 11-50:Global average sea level from nine records shows decreasing rate
of sea-level rise.
Figure 11-51 :Sea-level rise at Australian tide gauges is slowing
Figure 11-52: A sea-level test
Figure Il-53:The Antarctic
Figure 11-54: Increasing Antarctic sea-ice area
Introduction
Climate Science and the Non-Expert Problem
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an
endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
— H.L. Mencken
You have been exposed to a constant drumbeat from governments,
institutions and the media, warning of a looming environmental apocalypse
due to human-caused climate change. You have been warned that unless
society makes radical changes to our lives, primarily in energy
consumption, we will have an increasing number of floods, droughts,
hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and inundations of coastlines.
You are told that any climate change is entirely the result of people
introducing large amounts of “greenhouse gases” (mostly carbon dioxide)
into the atmosphere, and that natural forces have little or no effect on these
changes. You have also been told that these assertions are a product of
“settled science,” agreed upon by 97% of all scientists.
Yet you are not quite buying into this climate doomsday scenario,
perhaps because you have seen many situations where “experts” were
proven to be completely incorrect, or perhaps because skeptics of the
“settled science” make amazingly good sense. You may also realize that
models used to predict future temperatures are incredibly complicated, and
that those models require human judgement that allows for variables.
Finally, you may have noticed that the term global warming morphed into
climate change in the mid-2000s, after the predicted warming stopped, and
that climate change is now the scapegoat for every weather event
considered unusual.
I had many of the same questions concerning the science behind
climate-change alarmism. These led me to a deep dive into the methods of
the scientists and the validity of what was reported as scientific fact. As a
geoscientist who has dealt with various aspects of the Earth’s processes for
1
more than 35 years, I know that the brief hundred or so years of recorded
temperatures—and the even shorter time frame since the first satellite was
launched—is just a blink of a geologic eye. It is too brief a period to
evaluate the data adequately. Much of climate science deals with the few
decades of recorded data available, and does not attempt to place this data
in the longer geologic perspective needed to analyze it adequately.
Scientists who claim that global catastrophe is lurking right around the
comer because of the increased production of greenhouse gases sound like
they have the facts on their side, but so do the skeptics who dispute them.
They both can’t be right. Which is it? So, you are questioning the premise
of catastrophic climate change, but you are not a scientist, and likely don’t
believe that you have the necessary skills to evaluate adequately the
competing claims.
This is what Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) calls the non-expert
problem. People suspect something is amiss with the one-sided deluge of
information about climate catastrophe, but aren’t fully equipped to assess it
and judge for themselves. This is the purpose of this book: to provide non¬
scientists with well-documented, easily understood data on the basics of
the science, while spotlighting the many glaring flaws in the climate-
catastrophe arguments. It is my goal that, armed with the information in
this book, you can respond confidently to those advancing misinformation
concerning our changing climate.
You will find in these pages many highly significant and, for the
climate-catastrophe crowd, inconvenient facts. These are facts that the
purveyors of impending doom have not publicized for good reason. They
reveal that the climate disasters they have prophesied are nothing more
than the imaginary hobgoblins about which H. L. Mencken warned us. The
inconvenient facts presented here show that the threat to humankind is not
climate change or global warming, but a group of men (and women) intent
on imposing an agenda based on severely flawed science.
The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful theory by an
ugly fact.
— Thomas Huxley
2
I. Global Warming — The Basics
1. Greenhouse Gases — Our Security Blanket
The greenhouse effect, the important mechanism by which the Earth
remains, for the most part, comfortably warm, cozy and livable, is also the
pretext for the advancement of doomsday predictions about carbon
dioxide-driven global warming. Since this theory is central to climate
change debate, and to every chapter in this book, it would be helpful for
you to have a basic understanding of the process. As you probably first
learned about greenhouse warming in high school science class, the details
are most likely lost in the same fog of time that prevents you from
remembering how to solve advanced polynomial equations, and what the
capital of New Hampshire happens to be. (That’s Concord.)
While about 30% of the Sun’s radiation is reflected by clouds, most of
it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere and strikes the surface. There it is
absorbed and its energy emitted in the near-infrared spectrum. Some of
that re-emitted energy is absorbed by greenhouse-gas molecules. As they
absorb the radiation, they in turn emit energy in the form of heat. This is
the greenhouse effect (Fig. 1-1).
Greenhouse gases and the warming they cause keep the Earth at a
comfortable average temperature* of about 15° Celsius (59° Fahrenheit).
Without them, the Earth would be an unlivable -18°C (-0.4°F). Good
examples of the extremes of greenhouse warming are two nearby planets,
as they bookend the spectrum of greenhouse gas concentration. Venus has
a pea-soup atmosphere, with C0 2 comprising 96% (compared with 0.04%
for Earth), and an average temperature of almost 462°C (863°F).
Meanwhile, Mars has virtually no atmosphere, and a temperature of -55°C
(-67°F). This is the “Goldilocks effect” (Table 1-1): Venus is too hot; Mars
is too cold; Earth is just right.
3
Figure 1-1: The greenhouse effect
Solar radiation
powers the climate
system
Some solar
radiation is
reflected by the
Earth and the
atmosphere
wl
The Greenhouse Effect
Some of the infrared radiation
passes through the
( atmosphere but most is
absorbed and re-emitted in all
directions by greenhouse gas
molecules and clouds. The
effect of this is to warm the
Earth’s surface and the lower
atmosphere.
!^fMOSP|H
(Modified from IPCC 2007)
Table 1-1: The “Goldilocks effect”
Planet
Atmospheric
composition
Surface temperature
(no greenhouse
effect)
Relative size of
greenhouse
effect
Mean
surface
temperature
Venus
96% CO 2
-40°C (-40° F)
100
462°C
(863“F)
Earth
0.04% COz:
ideal for life
-18°C (0 4*F)
1
15°C
(59° F)
Mars
95% CO 2
-56°C <-69°F)
0.1
-55°C
(-67T)
In the discussion about greenhouse gases, alarmist organizations and
4
their allies in the media focus solely on man-made gases as the main
agents of greenhouse warming. They do not mention the most significant
greenhouse gas of all—water vapor.
For example, the National Geographic climate-change website reports
that greenhouse gases “include carbon dioxide (C0 2 ), methane, nitrous
oxide (N 2 0), fluorinated gases, and ozone.” EPA’s greenhouse-gas pie
chart is something like the lefthand chart in Fig. 1-2. It shows no
contribution from water vapor. Based solely on charts like this and
descriptions like that given by National Geographic, one might well
conclude that C0 2 is the main driver of greenhouse warming. The main
driver of greenhouse warming—water vapor—is often completely ignored.
Figure 1-2: The contribution of greenhouse gases to global warming
Including Water Vapor
2%
(GHG Data source: CDIAC 2016, water vapor effect: Robinson 2012)
An easily understandable example of the role that water vapor plays in
retaining heat comes from the southwest of the United States, where a
summer evening walk in the near zero humidity of New Mexico may
require a jacket, while your friends in Houston are sweltering in the high
heat and humidity and dare not venture out at all.
Both sides of the issue agree that water vapor is responsible for the
lion’s share of the greenhouse effect, though the percentage of warming
attributed has been in dispute. There is no agreement, however, on how
much warming will occur due to increases in greenhouse gases, or on how
much of that warming has been, or will be, man-made.
Warming allows the atmosphere to increase the amount of water vapor
5
it can carry, which can then add to the greenhouse warming effect (water-
vapor feedback), but neither side agrees on the magnitude of this
“multiplier” effect on global warming. Overblown estimates of water-
vapor feedback will lead inescapably to overestimation of future warming
in the climate models. These overestimates have been identified as one of
the main reasons that these models have failed.
Be that as it may, the truth about water vapor is the first inconvenient
fact in this book.
Inconvenient Fact 1
Carbon dioxide is not the primary greenhouse gas.
Before global warming became a political issue, it was generally
accepted among physicists that water vapor contributes 60 to 95% of the
greenhouse effect. It is no more sensible or workable for governments to
attempt to regulate the weather by declaring C0 2 to be a pollutant than it
would be for them to try to regulate water vapor or declare it to be a
pollutant.
The role of water vapor within climate models and predictions based
on it is an inexact science, as the amount of water vapor in the air varies
markedly from place to place and from day to day. Absolute humidity can
range from near zero in deserts and Antarctica—the Earth’s driest
continent—to about 4% in the steamy tropics (Driessen 2014). Even a very
small change in water vapor, however, can so affect the greenhouse effect
as would a doubling of the present C0 2 concentration in the atmosphere
(Robinson 2012).
Downplaying or disregarding water vapor, or assigning too large a
magnitude to feedbacks such as the water-vapor feedback that is thought to
amplify the direct warming from C0 2 , serves to overemphasize Man’s
contribution to greenhouse warming.
Inconvenient Fact 2
The warming effect of C0 2 declines as its concentration increases.
Climate scientists have determined, and both sides agree, that the
6
warming effect of each molecule of C0 2 decreases significantly
(logarithmically) as its concentration increases. This is one reason why
there was no runaway greenhouse warming when the concentration of C0 2
was approaching 20 times that of today. This inconvenient fact, important
though it is, is kept very well hidden and is rarely mentioned, for it
undermines the theory of future catastrophic climate change (Hoskins
2014).
Diminishing returns apply (Fig. 1-3).
Figure 1-3: Less global warming for each additional 50 parts-per-million-by-
volume of C0 2 concentration
ppmv C0 2
(Graph calculated using IPCC’s formula A T 0 = ~ln£ ;AR3, Ch.
6.1 Courtesy Monckton 2017)
Summary — Greenhouse Gases
There is no dispute among scientists that C0 2 is a greenhouse gas, and that
increasing C0 2 concentrations will increase global temperature to some
degree. The $100 trillion question is: To what degree? The proponents of
man-made warming will tell you emphatically that C0 2 is the prime cause
of current temperature changes, while, as we shall see in subsequent
7
chapters, true science demonstrates that the slight warming caused by C0 2
is likely largely overwhelmed by the same natural climate drivers that have
been active for hundreds of millions of years.
2. Carbon Dioxide — The Foundation of Life, the
Food of Plants
Carbon dioxide, or C0 2 , is portrayed as the chief villain in the theory of
catastrophic global warming. The belief that our carbon-based lifestyles
will lead to an environmental Armageddon is fueling a multitude of anti¬
carbon initiatives, including efforts to stop the use of the three primary,
carbon-based sources of energy: coal, oil and natural gas. It has been
estimated that the “solutions” to global warming under the Paris agreement
would cost the people of the world $100 trillion in lost wealth by 2100.
According to Lomborg (2016), that $100 trillion would reduce global
temperature by one-sixth of a degree Celsius (0.3 i°F).
In December 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
issued a finding that carbon dioxide would be regulated as a pollutant
because it “threatens the public health and welfare of current and future
generations.” A month before the EPA finding was announced, Barack
Obama declared that the U.S. would reduce its emissions of C0 2 by five-
sixths of the 2005 levels over the next 30 years. As the Washington pundit
George Will noted, a reduction of that size means that per-capita emissions
would be about the same as they were in 1875 (Will 2009).
Calculatedly damaging proposals, such as that of the U.N.’s Paris
Climate Agreement, are all based on the questionable predictions of more
than one hundred complex computer models of the climate. These models
predict that a small rise in C0 2 concentration, altering the atmosphere by
just 1 part in 2,000 by the end of this century, will cause a dramatic and
harmful warming of the world’s weather (IPCC 2013).
Efforts by environmental activists and government entities to stop
pipelines, “keep fossil fuels in the ground,” and embrace “renewables,”
such as solar and wind power, are driven by this unjustifiable aversion to
C0 2 . The cost to our quality of life is already massive and would worsen
as the decades pass if the anti-carbon proposals such as those in the Paris
Accord were to be enacted.
The policies proposed to reduce our reliance on carbon dioxide are
economically harmful. They also raise several questions critical to the
climate debate. (Yes, Virginia, there is a debate.) These questions are
addressed in this chapter:
Is today’s C0 2 concentration unusually high?
How much of today’s C0 2 concentration is man-made?
Would higher C0 2 concentrations be dangerous or beneficial?
The concentration of C0 2 in the air has increased from about 280 parts
per million (ppm) by volume in the mid-18 th century, to a little above 400
ppm today. If we view the recent C0 2 data through the narrow time-frame
of a few decades or centuries, this increase of 120 ppm in C0 2
concentration appears significant. Yet appearances are deceiving.
We shall look first at current and recent C0 2 levels. Then we shall
travel back in geological time to get a long-term perspective. This will
show clearly that our current levels of C0 2 , while rising, are significantly
lower than they have been during nearly all of Earth’s history. We shall see
also that today’s low C0 2 concentration is starving trees and plants of the
food they need to achieve their full growth potential via photosynthesis.
Inconvenient Fact 3
First and foremost, C0 2 is plant food.
C0 2 : The Basics
Nearly 99% of the atmosphere consists of nitrogen and oxygen. The
remaining 1% consists of several trace gases (Fig. 1-4), including C0 2 ,
whose current concentration represents just 0.04% of the atmosphere, or
400 molecules out of every million. Current levels are an incredibly small
percentage of the atmosphere, albeit an important one, as advanced plant
life could not survive without at least 150 ppm. As we shall see, that 150
ppm “line of death” is dangerously close to recent concentrations.
9
Figure 1-4: Gases in the atmosphere, excluding water vapor
(Source data from U S. National Weather Service)
The largest contributor to C0 2 from human activities is the burning of
fossil fuels for transport, heating, cooking, power, and a myriad of other
uses. Using these fuels, we enjoy our modem conveniences, make our
livings and enjoy healthier and longer lives than anybody in all of history
(Fig. 1-5).
Figure 1-5: Sources of man-made C0 2 emissions
(Source data: Le Qu6re 2012)
Interestingly, cleaner-burning, lower-cost, natural gas has been
increasing its share of the energy sector. It emits significantly less C0 2 per
unit of thermal energy than either coal or gasoline (Fig. 1-6).
10
Figure 1-6: Pounds of C0 2 emitted, per million British Thermal Units (BTU, i.e.,
energy output)
Fuel
Pounds C02/million BTUs
Coal (bituminous)
206
Gasoline
157
Natural gas
117
(Source data US El A 2017)
Recent global C0 2 emissions have been dominated by China, the
United States, the European Union and India (Boden 2017). These four
were responsible for 61% of worldwide C0 2 , with about 190 countries
making up the rest (Fig. 1-7).
Figure 1-7: C0 2 emissions by country, 2014
(Source data Boden 2017)
Earth’s Carbon Dioxide History
Direct atmospheric C0 2 measurements began in 1958 at the Mauna Loa
Observatory, Hawaii. They show a steady rise in C0 2 from 314 ppm in
1958 to 406 ppm in early 2017 (Fig. 1-8).
The 40% increase, from 280 ppm in 1750 to 406 ppm in 2017, is
11
widely recognized to be mainly man-made. This would be primarily from
energy consumption, but also from cement manufacture, and a small
amount from the flaring of natural gas. A longer-term view (Fig. 1-9)
shows global C0 2 emissions began rising very slightly in the mid-1850s,
with a significant acceleration since the mid-20 th Century.
Is today’s C0 2 concentration of -400 ppm unprecedented, unusual, or
in any way dangerous? What happened in the early climate, when C0 2
concentrations very much higher than today’s prevailed?
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Year
(Source data: Tans 2017)
12
Figure 1-9: Global man-made C0 2 emissions
1760 1780 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
Year
(Source data Boden 2016)
Fortunately for researchers of historic C0 2 levels, accurate
reconstructions of atmospheric C0 2 concentrations are available for
hundreds of thousands of years from ice cores taken from Antarctica and
Greenland. Air bubbles trapped within the layers of snowfall that
compacted to form the glacial ice allow accurate dating and direct
measurement of the ancient gases.
Antarctica has had the longest continuous accumulations of ice. It
provides data going back 800,000 years, while data from Greenland
provides very useful information on Northern Hemisphere concentrations
dating back to the previous interglacial period, 128,000 years ago.
Fig. I-10 shows a 100,000-year record from Antarctica, dating back to
the beginning of the most recent ice age. This shows the typical C0 2
concentration decline during the glacial period, and the rise during the
warmer interglacial period. We see that there was a rise of about 120 ppm
since pre-industrial times. Is this just a normal increase during an
interglacial period, or is it abnormally high?
13
Figure 1-10: 100,000 years of C0 2 data from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
Going further back, we see C0 2 levels averaged about 280 ppm during
similar stages of each of the interglacial periods (Fig. I-11). The current
level of 400 ppm is higher by about 120 ppm, or -40% higher than the
standard for preceding warm periods.
14
Figure 1-11: 400,000 years of C0 2 data from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
(Source Data: Barnola 2003)
Inconvenient Fact 4
In the last four ice ages, the C0 2 level was dangerously low.
During each of the last four ice ages, C0 2 concentration fell below 190
ppm. At the end of the last ice age, it fell to 182 ppm, thought to be the
lowest in the Earth’s history. Why is this alarming? Because below 150
ppm, most terrestrial plant life cannot exist. We came within about 30 ppm
(30 molecules out of every one million) to the extinction of most plant life
on land, and with it the extinction of all higher terrestrial life-forms that
depend on it. Bear in mind that, before we began adding C0 2 to the
atmosphere, we weren’t sure that we wouldn’t cross that critical 150-ppm
threshold during the next glacial period. (That period may be coming
sooner than we think.)
15
Both the relatively short-term data from ice cores shown above in
Figure 1-11, and much longer-term data going back 140 million years
(Berner 2001, Fig. 1-12) show an alarming downward trend toward C0 2
starvation. The combustion of fossil fuels has allowed humanity to
increase concentrations of this beneficial molecule, and perhaps avert an
actual C0 2 -related climate apocalypse.
Inconvenient Fact 5
140-million-year trend of dangerously decreasing C0 2
16
Figure 1-12: The dangerous 140-million-year decline in CO ;
140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0
Million years before present
(Source data: Berner 2001)
The forecasters of climate doom say—correctly, as far as it goes—that
the C0 2 level has never been this high in at least the last 400,000 years.
They prefer to view the increase of about 120 ppm over the last 150 years
through the narrow lens of recent geological time. To properly analyze the
current levels, we need to jump into our “Way Back Machine.” When we
put the data into the proper context, it leads us to our next inconvenient
fact.
Inconvenient Fact 6
Our current geologic period (Quaternary) has the lowest average
C0 2 levels in the history of the Earth.
Contrary to the oft-repeated mantra of the media and the so-called
“experts” that today’s C0 2 concentration is unprecedented, our current
geologic period, the Quaternary, has seen the lowest average levels of
17
carbon dioxide in the Earth’s long history. Though C0 2 concentrations
briefly peaked 320,000 years ago at 300 ppm, the average for the past
800,000 years was 230 ppm (Luthi 2008).
The average C0 2 concentration in the preceding 600 million years
(Fig. 1-13) was more than 2,600 ppm, nearly seven times our current
amount and 2.5 times the worst case predicted by the IPCC for 2100. Our
current geologic period (Quaternary) has the lowest average C0 2
concentration in the history of the Earth (Fig. 1-14).
Figure 1-13: Carbon Dioxide—600 Million Years of Data
Million years before present
(Source data: Berner 2001)
It should be obvious to impartial observers of the long-term data that,
rather than experiencing excessively high levels of carbon dioxide, we are
in fact in a period of C0 2 starvation. While short historical periods are
used to support apocalyptic visions of life in a world with slightly
increased C0 2 , perspective is everything: the increase of -120 ppm since
the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is barely recognizable when
viewed in the context of a longer section of Earth’s C0 2 history.
18
Figure 1-14: Average C0 2 concentrations in 11 geological periods
Is 400 PPM Really a C0 2 Tipping Point?
We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond
which there is no redemption.
— James Hansen, Former head of
NASA’s Goddard Institute for
Space Studies
This March [2014], global levels of C0 2 passed 400 ppm ...
Already we are seeing the deadly effects of climate change in the
form of rising seas, monster storms, wildfires, and extreme weather
of all kinds. Passing 400 ppm is an ominous sign of what might
come next.
— 350.org
The notion of a “tipping point” is not science. It is propaganda. The
climate extremists have declared, on no evidence, that 400 ppm C0 2 is a
“tipping point” beyond which the Earth cannot recover, without a drastic
reduction in C0 2 emission. Never mind that, as Fig. 1-13 shows, C0 2
19
levels were many multiples of 400 ppm during virtually all of Earth’s
history. This “tipping point” was an entirely arbitrary round number
selected because it would soon be reached. The “tipping point” might just
as easily—and just as arbitrarily—have been set at 425 ppm, but that
would have delayed the supposed launch of climate Armageddon to 2020
or later. It would have diminished the Damoclean fear of impending doom
needed to pass the economically destructive anti-C0 2 legislation that
would damage the West and the world.
The Social Benefits of Increasing Carbon
It has been well documented that more C0 2 directly benefits plant growth.
De Saussure (1804) was the first to link high C0 2 concentration to faster
plant growth. Since then, many thousands of peer-reviewed studies have
backed up his conclusion. Research has also shown that increased C0 2
helps plants to resist drought, warmer weather, pollution and other
environmental stresses.
Inconvenient Fact 7
More C0 2 means more plant growth.
Inconvenient Fact 8
More C0 2 helps to feed more people worldwide.
In the “Biological Change” section of the Nongovernmental
International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) Climate Change
Reconsidered (Idso 2014), the benefits of higher C0 2 concentration to the
20
production of the world’s food are listed. Here are the main points:
Nearly all plants increase photosynthesis in response to increasing
CO 2 (“CO 2 fertilization ”).
More C0 2 makes plants grow faster, and with less stress and less
water.
Forests are growing faster in response to increasing C0 2 .
More CO 2 stimulates growth of beneficial bacteria in both soil and
water.
CO 2 fertilization, leading to more plant growth, means less erosion
of topsoil.
More CO 2 means bigger crop yields, and more and bigger flowers.
More C0 2 fosters glomalin, a beneficial protein created by root
fungi.
More C0 2 means less water loss, less irrigation, and more soil
moisture.
More C0 2 helps plants to create natural repellants to fight insect
predators.
A summary of 270 laboratory studies (Idso, 2013) of 83 food crops
showed that increasing C0 2 concentrations by 300 ppm will increase plant
growth by an average of 46% across all crops studied (dry-weight
biomass). Fig. 1-15 shows 45 crops, with the percentage increase expected
from each crop, and (color-coded) with the cash benefit to the global
economy resulting from the C0 2 -driven increase in crop yield for that crop
in the half-century from 1961 to 2010.
Conversely, a large number of studies show the adverse effects of a
low-C0 2 environment. For instance, Overdieck (1988) indicated that,
compared to today, plant growth was reduced by 8% in the period before
the Industrial Revolution, with its low concentration of 280 ppm C0 2 .
While it is only common sense that plants thrive in response to higher
C0 2 concentrations, it is also relevant that the ancestors of the plants on
which we rely first evolved and prospered when C0 2 levels were up to 10
times today’s levels. Therefore, the proposed attempts by climate
extremists to reduce C0 2 concentrations would be bad for plants, bad for
animals, and bad for humankind.
21
Although I do not pretend to speak for the planet’s flora, I am quite
certain that, if plants had a say in the matter, they would not be lobbying
for reductions in C0 2 levels. For plants, C0 2 is food. They need more of it,
not less.
Inconvenient Fact 9
More CO 2 means moister soil.
22
Figure 1-15: Crop yield growth and cash benefit with 300 ppm more C0 2 (based
on 3,586 experiments on 549 plant species)
Carrots & turnips
Fresh fruit lot elswhere specified
Tropical fresh fruit not elsewhere specified
Grapes
Sugar beet
Dry beans
Oranges
♦54.8%!
Yams
♦47.0%'
Groundnuts with shells
+47.0%
Rapeseed
+46.9%
Soybeans
♦45.5%
Bananas
♦44.8%
Apples
Increase in
Coconuts
Plantains
+44 8% ^ 72SponS(
Cucumbers & gherkins
♦44.8% doubled CC
Pears
+44.3%
Millet
+44.3%
Watermelons
♦’41.5%
Pumpkins, squash & gourds
+ 41 .}%
Fresh vegetables not elsswhere specified
Chillies & peppers
♦41.1%
Eggplants
+41.0%
Cabbages & other brassicas
♦39.3%
Sunflower seeds
+36.5%
Paddy rice
♦36.1%
Mangoes, mangosteensi guavas +36.0%
Tomatoes
+35.9%
Barley
♦35.4%
Olives
+35.2%
Wheat
+34.9%
Oats
+ 34 . 8 %
Sugar cane
+34.0%
Sweet potatoes
+33.7%
Potatoes
♦31.3%
Tangerines, mandarins
+29.5%
Dry peas
+ 29 . 2 %
+65.7%
♦617%
Maize ■+24.1%
Dry onions +20.0’•
Sorghum +19.9%
Lettuce & ciieory J+18.5%
+13.8%
+5.0%
| melons +4.7%
EE
Cash benefit from
C0 2 fertilization,
of crops. 1961-20101
$150+bn
$100-149 bn
$45-99 bn
$30-45 bn
$15-30 bn
$0-15 bn
(Idso 2013, courtesy Monckton 2017)
There is a growing realization that more C0 2 in the air means more
moisture in the soil, as Swann reveals (2016). The major cause of water
loss in plants is attributable to transpiration, in which the stomata or pores
on the undersides of the leaves are open to absorb C0 2 . With more C0 2 ,
the stomata are open for shorter periods, the leaves lose less water, and
more moisture remains in the soil.
23
These benefits are extremely important to our future ability to feed a
growing population, as observed by Madhu (2015). He reports on the
beneficial results of increasing C0 2 on soybean growth:
These results show a direct and interactive effect of elevated [COf
and soil moisture on plant growth that will affect not only ... global
food security but also nutritional security.
We will look at the benefits of C0 2 in more detail later, when we deal
with the various imaginary climate apocalypses. For now, let us note that
decreases in drought, heat waves and forest fires have all been linked to
C0 2 -related increases in soil moisture. Benefits such as these from
increased C0 2 concentration are inconvenient facts that the climate
extremists would prefer to suppress. They are seldom included in official
economic assessments of the supposed “social cost” of climate change.
Summary — C0 2 and Humankind
Rather than being at unprecedentedly high levels, C0 2 is at one of its
lowest concentrations in the long history of the Earth. What has been
called a miracle molecule, C0 2 in greater amounts is greening the Earth
with an astonishing increase in the productivity of plants and trees
worldwide—an increase so dramatic that it can been seen by satellites
from space. As usual, this good news is just the opposite of what we are
being told by those who call themselves “green.”
The attempt to demonize C0 2 as dangerously high at more than 400
ppm is nothing more than another of H. L. Mencken’s hobgoblins of
alarm. It is conveniently calculated to cause fear, so that people will
docilely accept drastic and economically destructive policies. So far, the
global-warming hobgoblin has been extraordinarily effective. Most
governments now have in place economically damaging regimes of
taxation and regulation intended to curtail the use of fossil fuels. The
policies themselves are scientifically baseless and economically senseless,
and their cost, in lives and treasure, is heavy.
24
4000
Worrying that 400 ppm is too high is like worrying about your fuel
tank overflowing when it reaches the 1/8 mark during filling.
— Pierre Gosselin
What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is
how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting
propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special
interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that carbon
dioxide from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying
toxin.
It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the
history of the world—that carbon dioxide, the life of plants, was
considered for a time to be a deadly poison.
— Ed Ring 2008
3. Temperature — A Question of Degree
We saw in the last chapter how proponents of man-made climate hysteria
have mischaracterized current and predicted concentrations of carbon
dioxide. C0 2 is demonized because of the supposed link between it,
warmer weather and a host of purported catastrophes.
As with carbon dioxide, most of the media-driven hysteria and climate-
25
science research on temperature has focused on the recent record: just 250
years for thermometers and the past 50 years for satellites. And, as with
C0 2 reporting, a focus only on these relatively short time spans tends to
provide a skewed interpretation of the data.
For example, the climate alarmists tell us that the warming of recent
decades is unusual and unprecedented. They also breathlessly report that
last month or year or decade (take your pick) was the highest in recorded
history. Yet recorded history is a blink of an eye in geological time. The
catastrophists are viewing the climate through the narrowly focused lens of
modern history. To put the data in its proper context, one needs to take a
long-term geologic perspective—thousands and millions of years.
As with C0 2 , we will look first at temperatures in the modem era and
then place the data in its proper perspective by gradually going back from
decades to hundreds of millions of years.
First, however, we must deal with the elephant in the room—perhaps
the most pivotal and controversial issue involved in the climate-science
debate.
The Hockey-Stick Graph and ‘Unprecedented’
Global Warming
Until 1998 the “consensus” view was that over the last several
thousand years temperatures had risen and fallen as shown in noted
climatologist Hubert Lamb’s graph (Fig. 1-16), reproduced in 1990 in the
First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC). The graph shows warming beginning in the late-17 th
century as the Earth began to come out of the coldest portion of the Little
Ice Age (1250 - 1850), followed by recent temperatures significantly less
than those experienced in the Medieval Warm Period (950 - 1250).
This view, which prevailed before the politicization of climate science,
was based on extensive historical documents and measured temperatures.
It was understood that several previous warm periods had occurred over
the last 10,000 years (including the Modern, Medieval, Roman, Minoan,
Egyptian Old-Kingdom and Holocene climate optima) and that all were
warmer than today, even though C0 2 concentration was only 70% of
today’s. This inconvenient contradiction of lower C0 2 and higher
26
temperatures did not fit the template that connected rising C0 2 to a
harmful temperature increase to justify draconian measures for reducing
our carbon footprint.
Even more inconvenient was that our current warming trend had
actually begun more than 200 years before any significant man-made
contribution to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The traditional
scientific account of the recent history of our planet’s temperature could
not be allowed to stand if the theory of catastrophic humaninduced
warming were to be accepted.
Figure 1-16: Hubert Lamb’s temperature graph of the past 1,100 years
Enter Michael Mann, a hitherto unknown climate scientist. Mann, with
two colleagues, published two papers (Mann 1998 and 1999) that
purported to reconstruct 1,000 years of the Earth’s temperature. They
stated that “temperatures in the latter half of the 20th century were
unprecedented” and that “even the warmer intervals in the reconstruction
pale in comparison with mid-to-late 20th-century temperatures.”
Their results were summarized in a graph that has become a poster
child for claims of human-driven temperature increases (Fig. 1-17). It
featured steadily declining temperatures from 1000 - 1900 A.D., followed
by rapidly increasing temperatures in the 20 th century. The well-
documented Medieval Warm Period was suddenly gone, along with the
27
uncomfortably cold Little Ice Age. Most importantly, the sudden ramp up
of temperatures coincided with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
and steadily increasing C0 2 levels. Because the graph had a 900-year shaft
of slowly declining temperature and then a short blade of rapidly
increasing temperature, it was dubbed the “Hockey Stick.”
The planet’s self-proclaimed climate guardians quickly latched upon
the hockeystick graph as “proof’ of a causal link between greenhouse gas
and dangerous warming. The graph was a centerpiece of IPCC’s Third
Assessment Report in 2001.
Figure 1-17: The Mann-made hockey stick
(IPCC 2001)
Why the ‘Hockey-Stick’ Graph Matters
If Mann’s depiction of temperature over the last millennium were correct,
then his work might form a solid basis for recent warming being mostly
man-made. This infamous chart featured prominently in A1 Gore’s movie
and book An Inconvenient Truth, and also as a backdrop to many IPCC
press conferences.
28
Mann’s basis for the graph in Fig. 1-17 has been heavily criticized.
Those who challenged it include many scientists who support the idea oj
man-made warming.
First, Mann relied heavily for temperature proxies on a relatively small
dataset of tree-ring data primarily from California bristlecone pines, and a
very small sample from cedars on the Gaspe Peninsula (wherever that is).
The IPCC itself had previously issued warnings that tree-ring data are a
poor source for temperature reconstruction. The reason is that the width of
the annual tree-ring will grow thicker not only when the weather is
warmer, but also when it is wetter, or when more C0 2 in the air fertilizes
the tree and boosts its growth.
Even the scientists who provided the data for the bristlecone-pine
series gave specific warnings against using it for temperature
reconstruction. Mann used the data anyway. It provided the results he
wanted. Not only did he use questionable proxies, he cherry-picked a
relatively small number of tree-rings and ignored a greater number of trees
from the same area that did not show the results that he desired.
Secondly, a detailed review by two Canadian researchers (McIntyre
1998) into the mathematical and statistical methodology used by Mann
revealed multiple serious errors. Amazingly, no matter what data the two
scientists plugged into Mann’s formula, it invariably produced a “hockey
stick”. They concluded, therefore, that Mann’s hockey-stick reconstruction
of changes in the Earth’s temperature was “primarily an artefact (sic) of
poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal
components.”
Absence of the medieval warming in the Hockey Stick graph might
simply mean tree ring proxies are unreliable, not that the climate
really was relatively cooler.
— Professor John Christy, Director
of the Earth System Science
Center at Univ. of Alabama,
Huntsville in testimony to
Congress, March 31, 2001 (Steyn
2015)
Mann’s hockey stick has indeed been substantially discredited
29
— Dr. Hamish Campbell, PhD,
Geologist New Zealand’s
Institute of Geological and
Nuclear Sciences
We now know that the hockey stick is fraudulent
— Dr. Michael R. Fox, Professor of
Chemistry at Idaho State
University (Steyn 2015)
In the coming sections, we shall see what the actual physical data and
historical records really tell us about temperature and about whether our
current temperatures are really unusual and unprecedented, as proponents
of climate alarmism such as Michael Mann would have us believe. Look at
the data. Make up your own mind.
Modern Instrumental Data
There are three ways to measure atmospheric temperature directly using
instruments. Each has limitations.
Method_First Used
Land and ocean surface thermometers 1659
Weather balloons Mid-1950s
Satellites 1979
Satellites are the most reliable temperature measuring tool and have
nearly global coverage, but have a very short history. Weather balloons are
also reliable but can usually be used only over land and only go back 60
years or so. Thermometers have the longest record: the Central England
Temperature Record, dating from 1659, was the first-ever regional record,
but their accuracy is somewhat limited because local effects such as
increasing urbanization can produce artificial localized warming.
Satellite data for temperature history is preferable to other methods due
to the accuracy it provides, but satellites have been providing data for less
than 40 years. The data reveals a nearly 20-year trend of warming (1979 -
1998) beginning when the first climate satellites were launched in 1979
(Fig. 1-18). That warming trend ended with an exceptionally warm 1998
30
and then 18 years of essentially flat temperatures.
Figure 1-18 Satellite measured global warming since 1979: <0.5°C (0.9°F)
Using only this satellite data is a bit iffy because of the short
temperature history. Additionally, the Earth was just exiting a 33 year-long
cooling trend just as the first climate satellite was launched. Because of the
long cooling trend, the earliest satellite data likely captured temperatures
that were the coldest since the mid-1940s. At the Earth’s surface, the two
longest-standing terrestrial thermometer datasets are kept up by the U.K.
Met Office. They include the HadCRUT4 dataset, which has been
continuously updated since 1850, and the Central England temperature
record, the world’s longest regional record that dates to 1659.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and most
other agencies promoting a link between human activities and the current
warming, use the HadCRUT4 data (Fig. 1-19). The graph shows
temperature data from 1850 to 2017 derived from direct thermometer
readings and reveals that there has been a general overall warming trend of
about 0.85°C (1.5°F) over the last 167 years. Significantly, the data
collection began around the time that many researchers deem to be near the
end of the 500-plus-year “Little Ice Age” in the mid-1850s (more on that
later).
31
Figure 1-19: Thermometer data show a temperature increase of 0.85°C (1.5°F)
1850-2017.
I860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
(Source data: HadCRUT4, 2017)
The warming has occurred in fits and starts with three distinct periods
of cooling or flat temperatures and two periods of warming. A third period
of warming may be occurring now, but time will tell.
The reason that the IPCC and other pro-alarmist groups use the
relatively short HadCRUT4 dataset rather than the much longer records
that are available is that it is much easier to allege a causal linkage between
C0 2 increase and warming if only looking at the relatively short term. If
we review the above data and add the human C0 2 emissions, one could
make a reasoned argument that there is likely a connection between
increasing C0 2 emissions and rising temperature (Fig. 1-20). As we have
seen in the carbon dioxide section, however, context is everything.
32
Figure 1-20: Temperature vs. C0 2 (1850 - 2013)
(Source data: Temperature: HadCRUT4, C0 2 Boden 2016)
Two hugely inconvenient facts emerge upon close inspection of the
above chart. Significant carbon dioxide emissions didn’t start ramping up
until shortly after the end of the Second World War. Yet, since 1945, more
than 70% of that time frame included periods of either declining or flat
temperatures (Fig. 1-21).
During two long periods of time from 1945 to 1979 and from 1998 to
2015, temperatures either ceased increasing or actually fell. Both of these
long periods co-incided with rising C0 2 . If C0 2 is driving dangerous
warming, as the promoters of anthropogenic global warming (AGW)
would have us believe, why did more than 70% of the postwar period
show stable or even falling temperatures despite the fact that C0 2
concentrations were inexorably rising? This fact alone should cause any
open-minded observer to question the validity of the claims made by those
promoting the myth of a radical and dangerous man-made C0 2 -driven
warming.
33
Figure 1-21: Stable or falling temperatures prevailed in most of the period 1945
-2016.
I
1
I
1
s
1
o
o
75
o
O
For nearly 18 years, beginning in 1998, the warming stopped.
According to the HadCRUT4 dataset (Fig. 1-22) and backed up by satellite
and balloon data, the global warming that began in 1976 suddenly and
inexplicably stopped. According to global warming theory, humankind’s
ongoing contribution of C0 2 should have continued to warm the planet’s
atmosphere. Yet, for almost 18 years, the warming stopped as C0 2
relentlessly increased.
Inconvenient Fact 10
Recent Inconvenient Pause of 18 years in warming, despite rise in
C0 2
Realization among the leaders of climate alarm that their supposedly
infallible theory had suspended its functioning for some unknown reason
forced them to modify their terminology. It was during this long period
without warming that “global warming” morphed into the all-inclusive
term “climate change. ” Now, anything at all out of the ordinary can be
attributed to man’s climate influences, even though climate, like baseball,
sets out-of-the-ordinary records all the time. In the climate, out of the
ordinary is ordinary.
34
Based on the most recent data and confirmed by examination of
satellite data, the Inconvenient Pause may have ended in 2015. As we shall
see by looking at longer-term data, additional warming probably will
continue for at least a portion of this century, but likely not to the levels
predicted by the IPCC.
Figure 1-22: An inconvenient pause: 18 years of no warming yet C0 2 increased
Year
(Source data: Temperature: HadCRUT4, C0 2 : Tans 2017)
39S I.
a.
390 o
O
385 .2
v
380 a
o
375 E
ra
370 g
_l
365 c
3
m
360 2
It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
— Yogi Berra
If you can’t explain the pause, you can’t explain the cause.
— The Hockey Schtick
Much attention has been paid to the recent nearly 18-year Inconvenient
Pause in warming shown above in Figure 1-22 and rightly so. It is very
recent and seems to contradict the main thrust of the alarmists’ projections.
Just as important as the Pause, but not so much discussed, is the significant
33-year span of global cooling from 1944 - 1976 that coincided with
steeply increasing C0 2 concentration as global industrial activity picked up
after the Second World War (Fig. 1-23).
While studying geology in the 1970s, I was taught that we likely were
heading toward another ice age based on the previous 30-plus years of
35
cooling and the fact that our inter-glacial period had persisted for longer
than some previous warm periods. This was considered “settled science.”
It was not a question of whether the next ice age would come, but when.
Inconvenient Fact 11
C0 2 rose after the Second World War, but temperature fell.
Figure 1-23: For 33 postwar years, C0 2 rose quickly but temperature fell.
The facts have emerged, in recent years and months, from research
into past ice ages. They imply that the threat of a new ice age must
now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale
death and misery for mankind.
— Nigel Calder, 1975
If present trends continue, the world will be... eleven degrees
colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take us
to put us in another ice age.
— Kenneth Watt, during the first
Earth Day celebration in 1970
Today’s global-warming advocates are as adamant about their beliefs
as were yesterday’s global-cooling enthusiasts, but they will probably turn
out to be just as wrong.
36
REALLY Inconvenient Fact 12
Modern warming began long before SUVs or coal-fired plants.
As we saw in the last section on carbon dioxide, in the climate debate,
context is everything.
Earlier I wrote that, if Michael Mann’s modeling of global
temperatures were correct, and we had 900 years of cooling followed by a
sharp increase in the 20th Century, then that would be strong evidence
linking man’s activities to modern warming. The counter-evidence to the
Ma nn argument would be data showing that modem warming began
before C0 2 began to rise sharply. It would suggest that natural forces were
the primary driver of warming prior to 1900 and likely remain so today.
Some Important Charts
The following charts may be some of the most important in the entire book.
These charts demonstrate conclusively that the current trend of increasing
temperatures began long before anyone drove the first Model T to the
grocery store, and long before C0 2 levels cracked 300 ppm. Multiple lines
of evidence support the notion that warming following the Little Ice Age
predated the recent rise in C0 2 concentration. This inconvenient data is
part of the cumulative evidence that will eventually drive the final nails
into the coffin of the catastrophic man-made warming theory.
The Central England temperature record (HadCET) contains the
longest continuously measured regional temperature dataset in the world,
going back more than 350 years. As we shall see, promotion of this longer
record by the IPCC would have cut the legs out from under their primary
mission of linking human-caused greenhouse gases to harmful increases in
temperature. It would also have thoroughly discredited the Mann-made
hockey-stick interpretation of steadily lowering temperatures until the 20th
century and then a sudden C0 2 -driven warming.
The Central England record (Fig. 1-24) began in 1659, during some of
the coldest temperatures in the last 4,500 years. Its earliest data was
37
captured during a period of extreme cold from 1670 to 1715 that is known
as the Maunder Minimum, after Edward Maunder, a researcher at the
Royal Observatory at Greenwich, London, who noticed that it coincided
with a period of sharp decline in solar activity. The Maunder Minimum
was the coldest period during the 600-year Little Ice Age (1250 - 1850),
which brought famine, poor harvests, disease and widespread loss of life.
As we shall see, humanity has historically suffered greatly during cold
periods. The Little Ice Age was no exception, so the gradual warming that
began in the late 1600s was welcome relief to the inhabitants of that
period.
The population of northern Europe, who had suffered the most during
the Little Ice Age (Iceland, for instance, lost half its population), could not
realize it at the time, but the beneficial warming that began in the late 17 th
century would be used 300 years later by climate alarmists to assert that
dangerous man-made greenhouse gases were increasing temperature.
Figure 1-24: Greater than 300 years of warming in central England from 1695 -
2017
Modern warming that began at the turn of the 18 th century continues to
this day, more than 300 years later. This gradual recovery from the death-
38
dealing cold of the Little Ice Age was appropriately dubbed “The long,
slow thaw” by Tony Brown (2011).
The warming began more than 200 years before any significant
contribution of man-made C0 2 to the atmosphere. This early warming was
entirely naturally driven and is directly at odds with Mann’s hockey-stick
depiction of steady cooling during this time. Those natural forces driving
the temperature increases in the 18 th and 19 th centuries did not suddenly
cease to act at the dawn of the 20th century.
Inconvenient Fact 13
Melting glaciers and rising seas confirm warming predated
increases of C0 2 .
Melting glaciers and rising sea levels are the direct result of warming.
Supporters of catastrophic human-induced warming often cite them as
proof that the weather is warming. Inconveniently for them, however, the
evidence shows that the global warming causing the rise in sea levels and
the retreat of the glaciers began long before any significant man-made C0 2
increases could have influenced either. Both are directly the result of the
natural warming that began in the year 1695.
In about 1250, temperature began its descent into the depths of the
Little Ice Age, and in only a couple of decades the waves of cold started
the march of the glaciers in both hemispheres (Grove 2001). The
advancing ice often had severe consequences for local populations,
destroying many villages. The area of Chamonix in southeastern France,
for example, is estimated to have lost one-third of its tillable land to
avalanches, snow and glaciers (Fagan 2000).
Because these events had profound negative effects on the local
populace, detailed records of glacial advances and retreats began to be
kept. These records allow us to determine the extent of glaciers with great
accuracy going back several hundred years. Figure 1-25 shows a summary
of glacial-length records from 169 sites around the world relative to their
extent in 1950 (Oerlemans 2005).
We saw that the current warming trend began in the late 17 th century
(Figure 1-24), but the glaciers could not begin to retreat until the
39
atmosphere had warmed sufficiently to allow summer ice loss to exceed
winter accumulations. That glacial “tipping point” occurred around 1800,
with full-on retreat by 1820. Thus began two centuries of worldwide
glacial retreat that continues today. Notwithstanding man’s influence on
climate in recent decades, there has been no acceleration in the rate of
retreat.
The glaciers began to recede at least a century before appreciable
quantities of man-made C0 2 began to accumulate in the atmosphere and
nearly a century before the Mann-made Hockey Stick showed warming
had started.
One more nail in the climate alarmists’ coffin.
Sea level and glaciation go hand in hand. When water is locked up in
the ice of glacial advances, sea level drops. Conversely, warming and the
glacial retreat that comes with it return water chiefly to the oceans, raising
sea level. Again, we see that the rising sea level began a century before the
IPCC and Michael Mann tell us it should have occurred (Figure. 1-26).
Conclusive evidence from multiple lines of reasoning shows that,
contrary to Michael Mann’s hockey-stick graph, warming began 300 years
ago and marked the beginning of the end of the Little Ice Age.
Was this warming unusual or unprecedented? Figure 1-27 is a
compilation of reconstructed temperature histories using a variety of proxy
sources including ice cores and lake sediments. Loehle (2008) compiled 18
peer-reviewed studies of 2,000-year-long data series using sources other
than tree-rings. (The author believed that the tree-ring data such as those
used by Dr. Mann for his hockey stick could not accurately capture long¬
term climate changes, and so excluded tree-ring data from his summary.)
40
Figure 1-25: 200 years of glacial retreat
41
Figure 1-26: Greater than 200 years of sea-level rise
Year
(Source data: Jevrejeva 2008, PSMSL 2008)
In direct contradiction of Mann’s hockey stick, Dr. Loehle’s data
confirmed not only that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age
existed but also that the current warming trend began more than 300 years
ago, just as the Central England data in Figure 1-24 show.
He concluded that his compilation of proxies:
...shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age
(LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C
warmer than 20 th -century values at these 18 sites.
42
Figure 1-27: 2,000 years of temperature data
(Source data: Loehle 2008ab)
Placing recent warming into the framework of longer datasets is a key
to understanding whether our modern temperatures are similar to past
climate events, rather than being an unusual occurrence. Fortunately, we
have quite detailed and accurate temperature data from the Antarctica and
Greenland ice cores. In Antarctica, the data reach back 810,000 years,
while in Greenland several ice cores provide valuable data for more than
150,000 years.
Since this book is for non-scientists, we shall not go into the details of
how temperatures are calculated using ice data. Briefly, the ratio of two
isotopes of oxygen is used as a guide to the temperature of the air at the
time when it was trapped by the weight of snow above it. The scientific
basis for temperature predictions using this method is solid and has been
verified with comparisons to known recent temperatures.
Let us first look at the most extensive ice-core history available. It was
retrieved from ice core drilling in Antarctica. Figure 1-28 represents
800,000 years of temperature data. The 100,000-year cycles of ice ages
and interglacial warm periods show up clearly.
43
Figure 1-28: The ups and downs of temperature over the past 800,000 years
800,000 700,000 600,000 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000
Years before present
(Source data: Jouzel 2007a)
Inconvenient Fact 14
Temperatures have changed for 800,000 years. It wasn’t us.
(This Inconvenient Fact deserves to be repeated often.)
The periods of glaciation last for 70,000 - 125,000 years, while the
warmer interglacials last 10,000 to 15,000 years. Importantly, we are now
about 11,000 years into our current interglacial period, which may end
within the next century or last another several thousand years. In any case,
the beneficial interglacial warmth that we are enjoying now will end at
some point in the not too distant future (in a geologic sense). When that
next ice age descends upon us, it will be a true climate apocalypse
accompanied by crop failures, famine, mass emigration from colder to
warmer regions and unprecedented population loss.
The next ice age could arrive at any time... Don’t sell your parka.
Inconvenient Fact 15
Interglacials usually last 10,000- 15,000 years. Ours is 11,000
years old.
A closer look at the last four glacial cycles dating back 400,000 years
is still more revealing (Figure 1-29). Now the inconvenient facts start to
pile up.
44
Figure 1-29: The ups and downs of temperature over the past 400,000 years
400,000 350,000 300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000
Years before present
(Source data: Jouzel 2007a)
Inconvenient Fact 16
Each of the four previous inter-glacial warming periods was
significantly warmer than our current temperature.
Inconvenient Fact 17
The last interglacial, -120,000 years ago, was 8°C (14°F) warmer
than today. The polar bears survived. Greenland didn’t melt.
Recent research by the Niels Bohr Institute (Dahl-Jensen 2013) was the
first to target ice accumulated in Greenland during the previous interglacial
period, known as the Eemian. The results are very inconvenient for those
promoting climate doom. The results revealed that the Eemian interglacial
warm period, between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago, was much warmer
than previously thought. In fact, it was, 8°C (14.4°F) warmer than today.
45
The implications are enormous.
Even though the temperatures during the Eemian were 2.5°C (4.5°F)
higher than even the most aggressive IPCC predictions, the Greenland ice
sheet lost only a quarter of its mass. While 25% is significant, it is far less
than the alarmist predictions of total ice elimination in response to far less
warming. Also, polar bears evolved about 150,000 years ago and survived
the Eemian warm period even though there was seldom any polar ice. That
fact alone discredits theories of a pending polar-bear extinction caused by
moderate man-made warming.
The most recent IPCC Summary Report predicted complete destruction
of the Greenland ice sheet in response to much less warming than during
the Eemian:
Models project that a local annual-average warming of larger than
3°C sustained for millennia would lead to virtually a complete
melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
Or not.
Figure 1-30 is a closer look at the last 10,000 years of data from the
Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP2) reaching back to the beginning of our
current interglacial period. This chart should finally convince you that the
global warming scare is just that, a fanciful hobgoblin profitable to its
inventors and cripplingly expensive to the rest of us.
If Michael Mann, A1 Gore and other promoters of climate catastrophe
cannot show that the current warming trend is “unusual and
unprecedented”, they have no cause for the alarm they are sowing. Figure
1-30 may be the most substantial piece of evidence that the modern
warming is neither unusual nor unprecedented. Rather, it is very similar to
nine other warming trends of the last 10,000 years. This chart, in which the
present temperature for a coring site known as GISP2 is estimated from the
work of researchers at Ohio State University (Box 2009), should be first on
your list of “why global-warming alarmists are wrong.”
46
Figure 1-30: 10,000 years of blessed warmth
(Source data: temperature: Alley 2004; current temperature: Box 2009)
The damning data show that, for more than 6,100 years (or 60%) of the
current interglacial warm period, the temperature was warmer than it is
today. Of the nine earlier significant periods of warming since the end of
the last ice age, five had higher rates of temperature increase (Figure 1-31)
and seven had larger total increases in temperature. Moreover, each of the
previous warming cycles experienced significantly higher temperatures
than today. It should be clear, based on this chart, that our current warming
trend is a natural and predictable result of our fortunate exit out of the
Little Ice Age.
Unusual? Unprecedented? No and no.
From these 10,000 years of data, the inconvenient facts now come fast and
furious:
Inconvenient Fact 18
Temperatures changed during the past 10,000 years. It wasn’t us.
Inconvenient Fact 19
Today’s total warming and warming rate are similar to earlier
periods.
47
Inconvenient Fact 20
It was warmer than today for 6,100 of the last 10,000 years.
Inconvenient Fact 21
The current warming trend is neither unusual nor unprecedented.
Figure 1-31: Five earlier warming periods had higher rates of warming than
today.
0.012
0.01
0.008
0.006
0.004
0.002
0
Rate of increase in temperature per year (°C)
during warming trend
GISP2 Data
m
12 3
HHHBH
Warming Trend #
(Source data: Alley 2004)
Temperature is rarely constant. It is either rising or falling, and quite
substantially at that. There have been nine significant previous warming
trends over the last 10,000 years. These warming trends are similar to
today’s, but each ended with much higher temperatures than today’s. Even
if you slept through your history classes, you might recall that there were
no SUVs or coal-fired power plants operating in China during these
previous warming periods, yet temperatures rose and fell anyway. The
warming and cooling of the Earth have natural causes, and those natural
causes did not suddenly halt at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
If the past is the signpost to the future, we will see some more naturally
driven warming before we go back into the next cooling cycle. For the
sake of mankind, let us hope that the next cooling trend will not happen
too soon, and will not take us into the next ice age.
48
Stepping Millions of Years Back in Time
The ice-core data revealed much about how our current temperature trend
compares with others since the present era of 100,000-year glaciation
cycles began. Five million years of data (Lisiecki 2005) show that, overall,
our planet has experienced a long decline in temperatures. Beginning 3.5
million years ago, a series of 45 ice ages began.
This long period of increasing cold began with ice ages on a 41,000-
year cycle and included 33 separate glacial events. For the last 1.25 million
years we have been in a more severe 100,000 year-cycle in which, during
13 ice ages, there were glaciations lasting typically 90,000 years and
interglacial warm periods lasting about 10,000 years (Carter 2011).
Inconvenient Fact 22
Earth’s orbit and tilt drive glacial-interglacial changes.
The glacial-interglacial cycles are controlled by changes in the Earth’s
tilt and the shape of its orbit that occur in predictable cycles. The
eccentricity of the Earth’s elliptical orbit (i.e., how far the shape of the
orbit differs from a perfect circle) varies in 100,000-year cycles. The tilt or
obliquity of the Earth’s axis varies in 41,000-year cycles. The Earth also
wobbles on a 26,000-year cycle that causes a phenomenon known as the
“precession of the equinoxes”. Collectively, these three cycles, which were
originally discovered by a self-taught university janitor named James
Croll, are now known as the Milankovich cycles.
These long-term astronomical changes indicate that changes in C0 2
concentration cannot have been the chief reason for warming and cooling
in geological time.
Figure 1-32 provides additional confirmation that we should be more
concerned about a continuation of the multi-million-year downward trend
in temperature, rather than fretting over the welcome warmth over the last
150 years.
49
Figure 1-32: 3.5 million years of declining temperature
(Lisiecki 2005, modified from Rohde, Global Warming Art)
Figure 1-33 shows 65 million years of temperature data from oxygen
isotope records of deep ocean sediment cores. For the bulk of this time,
Earth was so warm that there was no ice at either pole. Only in the
relatively recent past has there been any ice at the northern pole. Based on
this data, we are living within the coldest period in the last 65 million years
(Robinson 2012).
You will hear from the proponents of catastrophic warming that our
temperatures are unusual and unprecedented. They are absolutely right: we
are living in times that are unusually cold!
50
Figure 1-33: For 65 million years, the weather was warmer than today.
1
o
I
i
I
60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Millions of Years Ago
Mio
No
Antarctic
Today:
historically low
temperature
jue
Mio
(Zachos 2001, modified from Rohde, Global Warming Art)
Figure 1-34, showing more than 4 billion years’ temperature data as
adapted from Scotese (2002), reveals that the Earth is now in one of the
coldest periods in its history. No geological period has been as cold as our
current geologic period, the Quaternary, for at least 250 million years.
Temperature variations of more than 10°C (18°F) in either direction
have been common. Viewed in the context of millions of years of Earth
history, our recent increase of 0.8°C (1.4°F) appears minuscule. It barely
registers as a blip on the chart.
51
Figure 1-34: Four billion years of temperature data
The inconvenient facts continue to come at a rapid pace based on this long¬
term data:
Inconvenient Fact 23
We are living in one of the coldest periods in all of Earth’s history.
Inconvenient Fact 24
Earth has not had a geologic period this cold in 250 million years.
Inconvenient Fact 25
The only thing constant about temperatures over 600 million years
is that they have been constantly changing.
(This is a recurring Inconvenient Fact.)
Inconvenient Fact 26
For most of Earth’s history, it was about 10°C (18°F) warmer than
today.
52
Our review of these four billion years of data shows that the Earth
usually has been either very warm or very cold, oscillating between very
warm “hothouse” conditions and much colder “icehouse” or “snowball
Earth” conditions. During hothouse periods, high temperatures prevail and
ice is rare. During icehouse periods such as the present, the Earth cycles
between long periods of glaciation and shorter interglacial periods of
somewhat warmer temperatures, but with extensive ice at both poles. The
current “icehouse” phase has lasted 3.5 million years. Fortunately for
mankind, we are currently in a blessedly warm interglacial period. For that,
we should be thankful.
Figure 1-35: Icehouse to hothouse fluctuations
Million years before present
(Modified from Scotese 2002)
Climate Models: Accurate, Inaccurate or Useless?
The data don’t matter. We ’re not basing our recommendations [for
reductions in carbon dioxide emissions] upon the data. We’re
basing them upon the climate models.
— Chris Folland, U.K.
Meteorological Office
Rather than seeing models as describing literal truth, we ought to
see them as convenient fictions which try to provide something
useful.
53
— David Frame, climate modeler,
Oxford University
A recent paper by Bjorn Lomborg, an economist, estimated that the cost of
measures to forestall global warming would be $1.5 trillion per year. What
are the expected results from this expenditure?
According to Lomborg’s calculations using the MAGICC simulator, by
2100 (on the optimistic assumption that every nation on Earth adhered to
its climate commitments) temperatures will have been reduced in his best
case by 0.17°C (0.31°F). That is less than half of a degree Fahrenheit, or
$42 trillion for each reduction of one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit in global
temperature. Methinks that might not be a very good investment.
Why are we planning to spend this outrageous amount of money that
might be used instead to help lift people out of generational poverty? It is
based on mathematically complicated climate models that predict a
significant rise in future temperatures, accompanied with an imagined host
of climate hobgoblins. As we shall see in the chapters on the many myths
of climate apocalypse, none of these predicted doomsday events are
evident today. If we are to base our policy decisions on predictive models,
we should find out if the models are actually able to accurately forecast
future temperatures.
A detailed examination by John Christy, a distinguished climatologist
at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and Alabama State
Climatologist, provides a stark assessment of the validity (or non-validity)
of the models that are used in support of imagined apocalypse. His
testimony in February 2016 to the U.S. House Committee on Science,
Space & Technology included remarkable charts that document just how
much the models overestimate temperatures.
The red line in Fig. 1-36 shows the average of 102 climate model runs
completed by Christy and his team at the University of Alabama in
Huntsville using the models on which IPCC itself relies. Also shown on
the chart are the actual, observed temperatures. The models exaggerate
warming, on average, two and a half times the actual temperature (or
three times over in the climate-crucial tropics).
54
Inconvenient Fact 27
IPCC models have overstated warming up to three times too much.
Supporting Christy’s findings, Patrick Michaels, Director for the Study
of Science at the Cato Institute, studied a suite of 108 climate model runs
dating back to 1984 and used in the 2013 IPCC compendium. He found
that the models predicted a warming rate of 2.6°C (4.7°F) per century
versus 1.7°C (3.1°F) in the real world. That is a big difference.
Figure 1-36: Global warming predicted by models compared with real-world
warming
1.0
0.8
O
> 0.6
re
E
o
c
0.4
!
a 0.2
E
£
o.o
- 0.2
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025
(modified from Christy 2016)
We are relying on complex computer programs, using an array of
complicated equations “tweaked” by the scientists who built them to arrive
at a forecast temperature some 100 years into the future. We cannot
confidently forecast temperature merely 10 days in the future from now,
but are asked to base climate policies and risk trillions of dollars on models
that have failed and failed again the test of prediction versus observation.
Applied to the climate, a very slight error in the boundary
conditions (for example, the movement of a butterfly’s wing) would
55
be escalated by the equations, making a long term forecast
impossible.
— Dr. Edward Lorenz: father of
chaos theory on the use of current
climate models
In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we
are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and
therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is
not possible.
— IPCC (2001, §14.2.2.2)
Winter’s Conning — Is Another Ice Age on its Way?
We are now more than 10,000 years into our current interglacial warm
period, and these warm periods typically last 10,000 - 15,000 years. We
see from Figure 1-37 that temperatures have been in a more than 3,500-
year decline, and that the peak temperature of each of the last three warm
periods was less than that of the period that preceded it. Might this data be
telling us to get ready for the onset of true glaciation? The author of
reconstructed histories of temperature from an Antarctic core concluded:
“The Holocene [our present inter-glacial period], which has already lasted
11,000 years, is, by far, the longest stable warm period recorded in
Antarctica during the past 420,000 years” (Petit 1999). You may want to
consider buying an extra set of mittens or, better yet, some property in
Costa Rica.
An arrival of the next ice age would be a horrific catastrophe for
human civilization. If the most recent glacial advances are an indicator of
what we may see in the future (Figure 1-38), prospects for humanity in
much of the northern hemisphere are bleak. Large portions of North
America and Europe will be covered in many hundreds or thousands of
feet of ice. Colder temperatures will cause massive crop failures and
famine, and mass migration from cold to warm would be inevitable.
56
Figure 1-37: 3,500 years of falling temperature
Figure 1-38: Icy problems ahead for more than 120 million in North America
alone
It would take only a few years of global crop failure from cold weather
57
to cause tens of millions of deaths worldwide. In North America alone, ice
would eventually cover areas that are now home to 85 million people in
the United States and another 35 million in Canada. Nearly all of Canada
and most of the Scandinavian countries might eventually need to be
abandoned to the ice.
Would it not be ironic if we spent trillions of dollars on C0 2 mitigation
only to realize in the not too distant future that we should have been doing
the opposite?
As we shall see in the next section, history tells us that each warming
period over the last several thousand years ended very badly with the
subsequent cooling, usually with widespread loss of life and a decline in
the human condition.
It is somewhat ironic that our contribution of greenhouse gases to
the atmosphere may actually be helping to delay the next ice age
from starting!
— United States Geological Survey
(USGS)
Climate and Culture: Very Good and Very Bad
Human advancement, from the cave-dwelling mammoth hunter during the
last ice age to the modern millennial using a smart-phone app while riding
in a self-driving Audi, happens in fits and starts. Nearly all great advances
occurred during warm periods. Conversely, during cold periods, the human
condition declined.
Before climate science became politicized, warm periods were referred
to by scientists as “climate optima” because, for almost all species on
Earth, warmer is better than colder.
During the 100,000 years of the most recent Ice Age, human
civilization barely advanced. Our ancestors relied on a subsistence culture
of hunting and gathering, using what was available in their immediate area.
Limited advances were made in flint-knapping or cave-painting, but
civilization barely advanced. A little over 10,000 years ago, all that
changed. The growing warmth at the end of the ice age enabled humanity
to prosper and advance. Domestication of animals and the birth of
58
agriculture led to an explosion of population and the creation of the first
communities.
The most dramatic advances in civilization took place during the last
four warm periods—including our own (Figure 1-39). The advancement of
science, technology and the arts have been directly linked to warmer
weather. The warming, which made possible an abundance of food, freed
the population from its preoccupation with daily survival to do other
things. It led to cultural development, something impossible during the
cold periods.
The recurring theme of civilization’s relationship with climate provides
the context for our next Inconvenient Fact:
Inconvenient Fact 28
For human advancement, warmer is better than colder.
The Minoan Warm Period (1,500 - 1,200 BC) coincided with what is
known as the Bronze Age. In this period, humanity saw great early
advancements such as the invention of the wheel, writing, bronze-smelting,
and wine-making. Mountain passes became accessible and storms abated,
allowing trade throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Great cities
arose. The first great European and Egyptian civilizations arose early in
this period, including the Mycenaean culture in Greece, and the first great
Egyptian dynasties, among those, the reign of the Pharaoh Akhenaten.
59
Figure 1-39: 4,000 years of temperature-driven cultural advances and retreats
Year
(Source data: Alley 2004; 'current temperature Box 2009)
As we saw earlier, scientific measurements from ice and sediment
cores indicate that the Minoan Warm Period was much hotter than today.
This Inconvenient Fact is supported by historical documentation such the
growing of millet as far north as Scandinavia—an activity that occurs
today only in tropical or subtropical regions.
Minoan prosperity was followed by the significantly lower
temperatures and the consequent decline in the human condition known to
climatologists as the “Vandal Minimum” and in Greek history as the
“Greek Dark Ages.” During the Vandal Minimum, mere survival was the
prevailing endeavor. Crop failures led to undernourishment and population
loss. The cold period persisted from 1,200 - 250 BC, but things went from
bad to worse around 800 BC when temperatures plunged even lower and a
new round of depopulation occurred across Europe. This time is known as
the “Hallstatt Disaster” (Behringer 2007).
The Roman Warm Period, also known as the “Roman Optimum,”
(-250 BC to 450 AD) witnessed a beneficial rise in temperature and
ushered in the explosion of civilization known as the Iron Age. This period
saw tremendous growth in mathematics, philosophy, the arts and
60
agriculture. Expansion of societies across Europe and Asia occurred,
including the apex of the Roman Empire and the first of the great Chinese
empires (Han Dynasty).
Multiple lines of scientific study drawing evidence from sources such
as sediments, ice cores and pollen from around the world have documented
that the Roman Warm Period was not only hotter than today, but
significantly so. Voluminous historical records confirm the warmth as
well, as does the presence of olive trees and vineyards much farther to the
north than can presently be grown. Olives grew as far north as the Rhine
Valley of Germany, and citrus trees in the north of England near Hadrian’s
Wall.
The rise in civilization during the Roman Warm Period was followed
by a devastating cold era (~450 to 950 AD), which ushered in one of the
bleakest times in modern history: the Dark Ages. This era was
characterized by famine, the Black Plague and a great decline in the
population of Europe. The cold and its associated maladies devastated the
cities, reducing much of Europe to a largely rural-agricultural existence.
Survival again took precedence over the advancement of civilization.
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This time of cold coincided with the decline and fall of the two major
empires of the preceding warm period—the Roman and Han Empires.
While it may not be entirely accurate to blame climate for the decline of
both of these and other lesser civilizations, the inability of rulers to feed
their subjects led to tremendous internal strife, including uprisings and
political turmoil.
The Medieval Warm Period (950 to 1250 AD) ushered in the great
awakening of the “High Middle Ages.” The associated positive
environmental conditions are often called the “Little Climatic Optimum.”
This period of warmth saw an intellectual renaissance, the establishment of
universities, the building of great castles and cathedrals, settlements on
Iceland and Greenland and the signing of the Magna Carta. Charles Doren,
the historian, called it “...one of the most optimistic, prosperous and
progressive periods in European history” (Moore 1996).
62
Recall that Dr. Mann and the IPCC dispute even the existence of the
Medieval Warm Period (MWP). To admit its existence would be to cast
doubt on their contention that we are living in an unusually warm time.
Prior to the Mann hockey stick, the warmth of the MWP was undisputed,
backed up by extensive historical documentation of tree lines, agriculture,
insects, glaciers and pollen, all supporting the thesis of the MWP being
warmer than today.
Documentation of the Medieval Warm Period is voluminous and
includes evidence of citrus fruits and vineyards located much farther north
than at present and burial sites of Vikings still lying in permafrost in
Greenland. A superb collection of historical and scientific studies that
bolster the notion of a much warmer MWP can be found at the website
CO 2 Science. 0 rg run by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and
Global Change.
63
Near the end of the MWP, those enjoying the benefits of the warmth
little realized that there would soon be more than half a millennium of
cold, misery, and death.
Bad things happen during cold periods. No period in history
demonstrates this fact more than the period that followed the Medieval
Warm Period—the Little Ice Age. From about 1250 - 1850, the cold
brought severe hardship primarily in northern latitudes. The combination
of bitterly cold winters and cool, wet summers led to crop failure, famine
and severe population decline. The worst of the cold occurred during the
deep freeze from 1670 - 1715, a period of extreme cold known as the
Maunder Minimum.
During the Little Ice Age, the Baltic Sea froze over and shipping to
Iceland and Greenland became impossible for long periods. The Vikings
abandoned Greenland in about 1350, and the population of Iceland was
halved. The Black Death (1348) and the Great Famine (1315 - 1321)
occurred early in this period.
And what a wonder! Some knights who were sitting on a
magnificently outfitted horse gave the horse and their weapons
away for cheap wine; and they did so because they were so terribly
hungry.
— A German chronicler of 1315
(Jordan 1996)
In Norse mythology there is reference to a Fimbulwinter —a three-year
winter with no intervening summer. This is thought to reference extreme
cold periods that occurred early in the Little Ice. Age. Temperatures in
England were so low that the Thames River often froze solid. The last time
the Thames froze was in 1814. The North Atlantic fishing industry was
devastated by the demise of the cod population. Recall also the cold
suffered by General Washington’s troops during the winter at Valley
Forge.
The beginning of the end of the Little Ice Age occurred with a rapid
warming from 1695 - 1735 in Central England at a rate equivalent to >4
degrees Celsius per century. That warming, which occurred naturally and
which we cannot have caused, continues to this day, though at a gentler
pace. No 40-year period since then has seen so great a rate of warming.
64
Most researchers determine the end of the Little Ice Age to be around
1850, but, as we have seen, it could just as easily be assigned a date 100
years or more earlier, long before any human C0 2 could have been an
influence.
Civilization at the end of the Little Ice Age had progressed little since
the time of the High Middle Ages. It was mostly agricultural. The horse
was the primary means of transport. Communication was by word of
mouth or by letter.
Yet, in less than 150 years we have progressed to a level of
advancement that could not have been imagined only 50 years ago, all
during rising temperatures and increasing carbon dioxide levels. Author
W. Cleon Skousen called this rapid advancement the “5,000 Year Leap,”
where 5,000 years of advances in communication, transportation, energy,
and exploration, and a doubling of the average length of human life, were
condensed into less than 200 years. A myriad of factors were responsible,
but it is certainly not clear that they would have occurred had we still been
mired in the frigid temperatures of the Little Ice Age.
We should be thankful that we are the beneficiaries of the warmer
weather. It allows us to tinker, to invent, and to dream, without the daily
worries of finding our next meal.
There is, perhaps, a 97% consensus among historians that, contrary to
what Dr. Michael Mann and the IPCC contend, the Little Ice Age actually
occurred and that the Roman, Medieval and Minoan Warming Periods
were warmer than today. Hundreds of historic accounts and thousands of
scientific papers confirm this Inconvenient Fact.
Perhaps it is time that Dr. Mann and his fellow climate travelers were
labeled “history deniers.”
Summary
Contrary to what the promoters of climate doom would have us believe,
extensive historic and scientific studies document that the temperature
increase over the last one hundred or so years is neither unusual nor
unprecedented. We have also seen that, rather than a pending climate
apocalypse, the modern warming should be viewed as a welcome respite
from the troubles and cold of the previous centuries and one that is
65
remarkably similar to many previous such trends in our current interglacial
period.
One of the primary complaints of those agitating for a reduction in C0 2
emissions is that the weather has become warmer since the Industrial
Revolution. Although it goes unstated, climate alarmists apparently believe
that the ideal temperature for today would be that of the time before the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution. That would put us squarely in the
middle of the temperatures of the Little Ice Age. History does not support
any such belief.
Cold, death and pestilence is what history tells us accompanies lower
temperatures. Is that what the scientists, politicians and environmental
alarmists agitating for less C0 2 want? Do they really want to return to the
temperatures of the Little Ice Age, the Dark Ages or the Greek Dark Ages?
We have seen how poorly our civilization fared during those cold periods.
A return to lower temperatures likely would result in a decimation of the
human population. But then, isn’t that what many of the climate zealots
really want?
The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but
a good thing.
— Christopher Manes, a writer for
Earth First! Journal
Inconvenient Fact 29
A return to the temperature at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution would lead to famine and death.
* Virtually all climate science deals with temperatures in degrees Celsius.
The conversion to Fahrenheit will be made and listed in red where deemed
necessary for our American readers.
66
II. Apocalypse? No!
Apocalypse Myths
Climate
Weather Gone Wild
Rains that are almost biblical, heat waves that don’t end,
tornadoes that strike in savage swarms — there’s been a change in
the weather lately.
What’s going on?
— National Geographic 2011
My, oh, my, the sky is falling. I must run and tell the lion about it.
— Chicken Little
In the early days of the climate alarmist campaign, the focus was nearly
entirely on effects directly related to a warming climate: heat waves,
droughts, rising sea-levels and the like. In the mid-2000s, with the
realization that “global warming” had mysteriously stopped or at least
paused, a new group of climate hobgoblins was conjured up under the term
climate change. Now anything at all unusual or harmful could be
demonized and linked to our sins of emission. And demonize them they
have.
A whole host of climate myths have been advanced to further the
notion that humankind is not only changing the climate, but that those
changes are devastating the planet and dragging down the human condition
with it. Supposed climate calamities linked to man’s actions run the gamut,
from forest fires to the spread of poison ivy. The linkage has one goal: to
instill fear so that we will welcome the imposition of radical, costly
regulations on our lives.
It certainly seems like extreme events are more frequent. With
assistance from a 24-hour news cycle, Twitter, Google updates and cell
phone alerts, we are barraged with weather events that formerly merited
coverage only in local news outlets. Now a tornado that touches down in
Valdosta, Georgia, may be publicized worldwide instead of only in the
Daily Times.
67
One can hardly blame the media for coverage, as most of these events
make for fantastic live shots of forests in flame and homes ablaze. Mild
weather just does not make for good television.
Even many of those reading this book who are skeptical of a human
l ink to a warming planet believe that climate catastrophes are increasing in
number and intensity. And why would they not? It is regularly reported as
a fact that “extreme” weather is more prevalent, along with wide-eyed
predictions of even more such ruinous events, owing to a warming world.
The following chapters provide information on many of the primary
climate myths, most of which you will find completely at odds with
portrayals in the media, and possibly with your own understanding. We
will look first at the most pervasive myth, that of a scientific consensus on
climate change. We then “dive deep” into the myths of a climate
apocalypse.
You will find that, rather than living in a world careening toward
planetary doom because of our excesses, just the opposite is the case.
Humanity and the Earth are prospering wildly, not in spite of rising
temperatures and increasing carbon dioxide, but because of them.
The Earth is becoming greener and experiencing fewer extreme
weather events. Lengthening growing seasons, more moisture in the soil,
and C0 2 fertilization are increasing crop yields. With these increases, we
are feeding our growing populations.
Enjoy the inconvenient truth and sleep well: the world as we know it is
not ending because of your actions.
Apocalypse? No!
“97% Consensus” — What Consensus?
We have heard that 97% of scientists agree on human-driven climate
change. You may also have heard that those who don’t buy into the
climate-apocalypse mantra are Luddite science-deniers. So count me in as
a Luddite, but a whole lot more than 3% of scientists are skeptical of the
party line on climate. A whole lot more.
In most conversations that I have with people who learn that I am a
scientist working on climate change, the first question that comes up is,
“So you believe in climate change, then?” My answer? “Yes, of course I
68
do: it has been happening for hundreds of millions of years.” As you know
by now, the question is not, “Is climate change happening?” The real
question is, “Is climate change now driven primarily by human actions?”
There are some scientific truths that are quantifiable and easily proven,
and with which, I am confident, at least 97% of scientists agree. Here are
two:
Carbon dioxide concentration has been increasing in recent years.
Temperatures, as measured by thermometers and satellites, have
been generally increasing over the last 150 years.
What is impossible to quantify is the actual percentage of warming that
is attributable to increased anthropogenic (human-caused) C0 2 . There is no
scientific evidence or method that can determine how much of the
warming we’ve had since 1900 was directly caused by us.
We know that temperature has varied greatly over the millennia. We
also know that for virtually all of that time, global warming and cooling
were driven entirely by natural forces, which did not cease to operate at the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
The claim that most modern warming is attributable to human activities
is scientifically insupportable. The truth is that we do not know. We need
to be able to separate what we do know from that which is only conjecture.
What is the basis for the “97% consensus” notion? Is it true?
Hint: You can’t spell consensus without “con.”
If, indeed, 97% of all scientists truly believed that human activities
were causing the moderate warming that we have seen in the last 150
years, it would be reasonable for one to consider this when determining
what to believe. One would be wrong, however.
Science, unlike religion, is not a belief system. Scientists, just like
anyone else, will say that they believe things (whether they believe them or
not) for social convenience, political expediency or financial profit. For
this and other good reasons, science is not founded upon the beliefs of
scientists. It is a disciplined method of inquiry, by which the scientist
applies pre-existing theory to observation and measurement, so as to
develop or to reject a theory, so that he can unravel as clearly and as
certainly as possible the distinction between what the Greek philosopher
Anaximander called “that which is and that which is not.”
69
Abu Ali ibn al-Haytham, the natural philosopher of 1 l th -century Iraq
who founded the scientific method in the East, once wrote:
The seeker after truth [his beautiful description of the scientist]
does not place his faith in any mere consensus, however venerable
or widespread. Instead, he subjects what he has learned of it to
inquiry, inspection and investigation. The road to the truth is long
and hard, but that is the road we must follow.
The long and hard road to scientific truth cannot be followed by the
trivial expedient of a mere head-count among those who make their livings
from government funding. Therefore, the mere fact that climate activists
find themselves so often appealing to an imagined and (as we shall see)
imaginary “consensus” is a red flag. They are far less sure of the supposed
scientific truths to which they cling than they would like us to believe.
“Consensus,” here, is a crutch for lame science.
What, then, is the origin of the “97% consensus” notion? Is it backed
up with research and data?
The earliest attempt to document a “consensus” on climate change was
a 2004 paper cited by A1 Gore in his allegedly non-fiction book, An
Inconvenient Truth. (Gore attended natural science class at Harvard, but
got a D grade for it.) The author of the cited paper, Naomi Oreskes,
asserted that 75% of nearly 1,000 papers she had reviewed on the question
of climate change agreed with the “consensus” proposition favored by the
IPCC: “Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to
have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.” None,
she maintained, dissented from this line of reasoning.
The Oreskes paper came to the attention of Klaus-Martin Schulte, an
eminent London surgeon, who had become concerned with the adverse
health effects of his patients from their belief in apocalyptic global
warming.
Professor Schulte decided to update Oreskes’ work. However, he found
that only 45% of several hundred papers endorsed the “consensus”
position. He concluded: “There appears to be little basis in the peer-
reviewed scientific literature for the degree of alarm on the issue of climate
change which is being expressed in the media and by politicians, now
carried over into the medical world and experienced by patients.”
The primary paper that is often trotted out in support of the notion of
70
“97% consensus” was written by John Cook and his merry band of climate
extremists. Published in 2013, it is the most widely referenced work on the
subject of climate consensus and has been downloaded more than 600,000
times.
Cook runs a climate website that is a smorgasbord of alarmist rhetoric,
specializing in attacks—often personal and spiteful in tone—on all who
have proven effective in leading others to stray from the dogma of
impending climate doom.
The project was self-described as “a ‘citizen science’ project by
volunteers contributing to the website.” The team consisted of 12 climate
activists who did not leave their climate prejudices at home. These
volunteers, many of whom had no training in the sciences, said they had
“reviewed” abstracts from 11,944 peer-reviewed papers related to climate
change or global warming, published over the 21 years 1991 - 2011, to
assess the extent to which they supported the “consensus view” on climate
change. As Cook’s paper said,
We analysed a large sample of the scientific literature on global
CC [climate change], published over a 21-year period, in order to
determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is
very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global
warming, or AGW). ...
The paper concluded,
Among abstracts that expressed a position on AGW [anthropogenic
global warming], 97.1% endorsed the scientific consensus. ...
Among papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming
percentage (97.2%o based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract
ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.
The paper asserted—falsely, as it turned out—that 97% of the papers
the reviewers examined had explicitly endorsed the opinion that humans
are causing the majority of the warming of the last 150 years.
When one looks at the data, one finds that 7,930 of the papers took no
position at all on the subject and were arbitrarily excluded from the count
on this ground. If we simply add back all of the papers reviewed, the 97%
claimed by Cook and his coauthors falls to 32.6%.
71
A closer look at the paper reveals that the so-called “97%” included
three categories of endorsement of human-caused climate change (Table
II-1). Only the first category amounted to an explicit statement that
humans are the primary cause of recent warming. The second and third
categories would include most skeptics of catastrophic anthropogenic
warming, including me, who accept that increasing C0 2 is probably
causing some, probably small, amount of warming; an amount that is
likely rendered insignificant by natural causes of warmer weather.
Table 11-1: Expanding the ‘consensus’ broadly
Level of Endorsement
Description
(1) Explicit endorsement
with quantification
Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent
global warming
(2) Explicit endorsement
without quantification
Explicitly states that humans are causing global warming or
refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a
known fact
(3) Implicit endorsement
Implies humans are causing glooal warming; e g. research
assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without
explicitly stating humans are the cause
Cook (2013)
Michael Bastasch wrote in 2017 that lumping skeptics with true
climate change devotees was “like claiming there’s a consensus on
legalized abortion by lumping pro-abortion activists in with those who
oppose all abortion except in cases of incest and rape. That ‘consensus’
would be a meaningless talking point.”
Agnotology is defined as “the study of how ignorance arises via
circulation of misinformation calculated to mislead.” This is how David
Legates and his co-authors (2015) describe the Cook paper and similar
attempts falsely to promote the notion of broad scientific consensus
surrounding the subject of a looming, man-made, climate apocalypse.
They reviewed the actual papers used by Cook and found that only
0.3% of the 11,944 abstracts and 1.6%o of the smaller sample that excluded
those papers expressing no opinion endorsed man-made global warming
as they defined it. Remarkably, they found that Cook and his assistants had
themselves marked only 64 papers—or 0.5% of the 11,944 they said they
72
had reviewed—as explicitly stating that recent warming was mostly man¬
made. Yet they stated, both in the paper itself and subsequently, that they
had found a “97% consensus” explicitly stating that recent warming was
mostly man-made.
Agnotology has the strong potential for misuse whereby a
‘manufactured’ consensus view can be used to stifle discussion,
debate, and critical thinking.
— Legates 2013
It appears that Cook and his co-authors manipulated the data to present
an altogether untrue narrative of overwhelming support for catastrophic
human-caused warming.
Note that the official “consensus” position—supported though it was
by just 0.3% of the 11,944 papers reviewed—says nothing more than
recent warming was mostly man-made. Even if that were the case—and
the overwhelming majority of scientists take no view on that question, for
it is beyond our present knowledge to answer—it would not indicate that
global warming is dangerous.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
eventually come to believe it.
— Joseph Goebbels
From the information we have just reviewed, the percentage of
scientists who agree with the notion of man-made catastrophic global
warming is significantly less than advertised. Several unbiased attempts
have been made to assess what the actual number might be. One of the
largest petitions concerning climate change was the Oregon Petition signed
by more than 31,000 American scientists, including 9,029 holding PhDs,
disputing the notion of anthropogenic climate alarmism (Figure II-1).
73
Figure 11-1: The global warming petition that 31,000 scientists signed
(Edward Teller’s signature at http://petitionproject.com)
More recently, in 2016, George Mason University (Maibach 2016)
surveyed more than 4,000 members of the American Meteorological
Society and found that 33% believed that climate change was not
occurring, was at most half man-made, was mostly natural, or they did not
know. Significantly, only 18% believed that a large amount—or all—of
additional climate change could be averted.
Inconvenient Fact 30
Only 0.3% of published scientists stated in their papers that recent
warming was mostly man-made
Science does not advance through consensus, and the claim of
consensus has no place in any rational scientific debate. We ask: What
does the data tell us? What does it mean? Can we reproduce the results? If
climate alarmists need to resort to an obviously flawed consensus opinion,
rather than argue the merits of the science, haven’t they already conceded
that their argument cannot be won through open debate?
Inconvenient Fact 31
Science is not consensus and consensus is not science
Cook’s 97% nonsensus [sic] paper shows that the climate
74
community still has a long way to go in weeding out bad research
and bad behavior. If you want to believe that climate researchers
are incompetent, biased and secretive, Cook’s paper is an excellent
case in point.
— Professor Richard Tol
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with
consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the
contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right,
which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by
reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant.
What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in
history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it
isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
— Michael Crichton
Water, Water Everywhere — How Droughts are
Declining
The impacts of climate change are expected to increase the
frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts in many regions, and
persistent drought could force foundational changes in the way
communities use and live on the land.
— The National Drought Resilience
Partnership
Prolonged dry spells mean more than just scorched lawns. Drought
conditions jeopardize access to clean drinking water, fuel out-of-
control wildfires, and result in dust storms, extreme heat events,
and flash flooding in the States.
— Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC)
One of the most-repeated hobgoblins of the global warming crowd is
drought—a simple, understandable and frightening story, already familiar
75
to hundreds of millions worldwide. According to the National Integrated
Drought Information System, in the United States alone an eighth of the
country and 80 million people were drought-stricken in early 2017 (Figure
n- 2 ).
Figure 11-2: United States drought monitor
(National Integrated Drought Information System)
Within the United States, only hurricanes are costlier than droughts,
and only then thanks to Hurricane Katrina (Ross and Lott 2003). Droughts
have been and are easily demonized. They not only lead to local wildfires
and water shortages, but also to wider effects on food and commodity
prices. Are those who warn us of increasingly harmful effects of drought,
like the NRDC, correct? Are these projections backed up with scientific
evidence?
It is easy to persuade the public that global warming is causing
droughts. After all, warmer temperatures should lead to drier conditions,
then to drought. It seems obvious. Many climate scientists and government
agencies have declared that droughts are becoming more frequent and
more severe, owing to human-caused climate change.
Concerns were heightened by the intense drought that gripped the
76
western United States from 1999 - 2016. As much as half of the
contiguous United States saw moderate to severe drought, and 10 of 11
states suffered from declines in water storage. It was a rare news report
that failed to include a quote from a climatologist, blaming the dry
conditions on human-induced climate change.
Once again, we have heard the predictions and conclusions of the
climate “experts,” but what does the data tell us?
Figure II-3 is a map showing the areas of the planet with increased
vegetation density (greening) versus those areas which show vegetation
loss (browning). This reveals that C0 2 fertilization and warming
temperatures have been greening the Earth, rather than turning it to dust, as
the prophets of doom tell us (de Jong 2011).
Figure 11-3: Thanks to our changing climate, much of the world is greening.
Two telling charts about drought are provided by government agencies.
The first, from the EPA, shows the Palmer drought-severity index (Figure
II-4). The second is a NOAA chart (2017a) of the areas of the United
States over the last 120 years that indicate whether the year was wetter or
dryer than average (Figure II-5). Both of these long-term data sets show
absolutely nothing to indicate more frequent or more intense droughts.
77
Figure 11-4: Palmer drought-severity index of mean drought conditions, 1895 -
2015
(EPA 2016a)
Figure II-6 shows the percentage of the world in various stages of
drought. The data reveals that droughts across the world have been
declining since the early 1980s.
A review of the most severe and persistent droughts of the 20th
Century identified 30 of these severe droughts, including the Dust Bowl of
the American Midwest in the 30s and the African Sahel drought of the 60s
(Narisma 2007). Curiously, nearly 75% of the droughts occurred before
1960, and well before the bulk of the surge in atmospheric C0 2 . According
to this and other studies, rather than seeing a predicted increase in
droughts, we are witnessing a significant decline in droughts, while both
temperature and carbon dioxide increase (Fig. II-7).
Inconvenient Fact 32
More C0 2 => fewer droughts
Inconvenient Fact 33
Higher temperature => fewer droughts
78
Figure 11-5: Percentage of United States very wet vs. very dry, 1895 - 2017
(NOAA 2017a)
Figure 11-6: Percentage of the globe in drought, June 1983 to June 2012
£ 60%
O)
o 50%
Q
c 40%
| 30%
© 20 %
c.
o 10%
Downtrend
Mndrougl
Extreme drought
Severe drought
Exceptional drought
ihtarea for 30 years
II || II
(modified from Hao 2014)
38 -38
79
Figure 11-7: Global frequency of severe, persistent droughts, vs. temperature
change and C0 2 emissions
8
1
7
7 droughts
I
droughts
droughts ( ||
.i 1
aH'
■
12 ^
c
o
10 |
1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 I960 1970 1980 1990
Year
(Source data: drought: Narisma 2007, temperature: HadCrut4, CO 2 : Boden 2016)
When we take a look at drought in the much longer term, that is,
drought in the western United States going back more than 1,000 years, we
find data that are very inconvenient to the official position of pending
climate catastrophe (Cook 2007). The reconstructions from the study
reveal the occurrence of past ‘megadroughts’ of unprecedented severity
and duration (Figure II-8), ones that have never been experienced by
modern societies in North America.
There is a scientific reason why one might expect fewer droughts. The
dual effects of rising temperatures and increasing C0 2 are working
together to increase the soil moisture around much of the world.
As we learned in the section on greenhouse warming, as the
atmosphere warms, it is capable of carrying more water vapor. The
additional water vapor tends to precipitate as rain. This increasing
precipitation, owing to a warming world, is having its effect on once
drought-stricken areas, such as the Sahel in the Western Sahara. The
increased water vapor is directly leading to more rainfall, and huge
increases in vegetation in formerly desert and semi-desert areas (Seaquist
2009). According to Martin Claussen of the Max Planck Institute, “The
water-holding capacity of the air is the main driving force.” It was reported
that some 300,000 square kilometers of Saharan desert had become green
80
over the previous 30 years, so much so that nomadic tribes were returning
to places where they had not settled in living memory.
After visiting the Western Sahara in 2008, Stefan Kropelin of the
University of Cologne’s Africa Research Unit stated: “Now you have
people grazing their camels in areas which may not have been used for
hundreds or even thousands of years. You see birds, ostriches, gazelles
coming back, even sorts of amphibians coming back. The trend has
continued for more than 20 years. It is indisputable (Owen 2009).”
Figure 11-8: Long-term changes in aridity in western North America
You will recall from our section on C0 2 , that increasing levels of the
gas mean that plants’ pores don’t need to be open as long, reducing
evaporation and increasing soil moisture. Increased resistance to drought
because of soil moisture is a major benefit of increasing C0 2
concentrations. Inconvenient facts like these contradict the apocalyptic
narrative of a world inexorably moving toward desertification.
The evidence is overwhelming: the only link between our changing
climate and drought appears to be that there are fewer of these events, and
they are less intense. This is an incredibly positive benefit for humankind
and the ecosystems of the Earth. Yet the promoters of climate doom
continue to assert just the opposite.
81
Forest Fires — Fanning the Flames of Needless
Panic
The effects of global warming on temperature, precipitation levels,
and soil moisture are turning many of our forests into kindling
during wildfire season.
— Union of Concerned Scientists
No matter how hard we try, the fires are going to keep getting
bigger, and the reason is really clear. We should be getting ready
for bigger fire years than those familiar to previous generations.
— Park Williams, Columbia
University researcher
Like many apocalyptic climate myths, there is wide acceptance among
the media, “climate experts,” and the general populace that forest fires are
accelerating in frequency and size, owing to man-made climate change. As
with drought, desertification, and heat waves, a link between warmer
weather and more forest fires seems to be only common sense. Without
specialist knowledge, one might logically surmise that warmer, and thus
drier, weather means more fires.
The news media pumps up its ratings by broadcasting spectacular
video footage and photographs of forest fires, particularly when they are
fatal. During any large fire, the media proffers opinions of climate
“experts” that man-made global warming is to blame for the loss of life
and property.
So seldom is the truth revealed in the news media that many readers
may well have assumed until now that supposed increasing frequency and
ferocity of forest fires are caused by man-made global warming.
This is really a window into what global warming looks like. It
looks like heat. It looks like dryness. It looks like this kind of
disaster.
— Dr. Michael Oppenheimer
82
Many scientific studies forecast more forest fires on the basis of the
same climate models that we have already seen to be fatally flawed in their
predictive capabilities. Fortunately, we have data available to study the
frequency of forest fires in both the recent and the distant past. The real-
world data indicates that “experts” like Dr. Oppenheimer are, in fact,
incredibly wrong on this subject.
We will look at the actual data that tells a story quite unlike the fake
news peddled by the media and alarmist organizations. The National
Interagency Fire Center provides extensive information on forest fires in
the United States (NIFC 2017, Fig. II-9). The data clearly show a declining
number of fires over the last 30 years. This mere fact is certainly at odds
with everything we have heard to date on the subject.
Figure 11-9: More C0 2 , but fewer forest fires
300,000
250 000
/
pnn (inn
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150,000
a r
1 ^
100 000
50 000
'/vvwv
0
li
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400 :
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380
370
360
350
340
330
320
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1962 1971 1980 1989 1998 2007
2016
Year
(Source data: Fires: NIFC 2017; CO 2 : Tans 2017)
Inconvenient Fact 34
Forest fires across the northern hemisphere are decreasing.
A study by scientists with the Canadian Forest Service compared
temperatures and C0 2 concentration versus frequency of forest fires over
83
the last 150 years in North America and northern Europe (Flannigan 1998).
Their results contradict the predictions of the promulgators of doom. The
authors demonstrated a link between more C0 2 in the air and fewer fires
worldwide. They attributed the decline in forest fires to the combined
effect of C0 2 fertilization and rising temperature, leading to greater soil
moisture. Their summary is worth reading:
Despite increasing temperatures since the end of the Little Ice Age
(ca. 1850), wildfire frequency has decreased as shown by many
field studies from North America and Europe. We believe that
global warming since 1850 may have triggered decreases in fire
frequency.
— Flannigan (1998)
A study in 2014 found that acreages burned worldwide in the 20 th and
early 21 st centuries had declined significantly (Yang 2014, Figure II- 10).
The authors attributed the decline in high-latitude forest fires, particularly
in most of North America and Europe, primarily to rising C0 2
concentrations. Just as was the case with declining trends in droughts,
additional soil moisture, thanks to C0 2 fertilization, has probably been
suppressing fires since significant amounts of C0 2 began being added to
the atmosphere in the 20 th Century.
Figure 11-10:Global burned area by decade
0.65 o
0.45 £
0.25 o
c
■
0.05 g
-0.15 «
-0.55 •”
1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
(Source data: Burned area: Yang 2014; temperature: HadCRUT4 2017)
The media and alarmist groups tell one story: the data tell quite
84
another. Rather than an increase in the frequency and intensity of forest
fires, as we have heard for many years, there are fewer forest fires, thanks
to more C0 2 in the air and higher water vapor, linked to increasing
temperatures. This is a very inconvenient fact for the anti-fossil-fuel
groups that ruthlessly exploit the tragedies of others to raise funds for their
causes. In the future, it will be very difficult to appeal for money on the
basis of forest fires when it becomes known that more C0 2 means fewer
forest fires.
Inconvenient Fact 35
More C0 2 » C0 2 fertilization » more soil moisture » faster tree
growth » fewer forest fires
Famine: The Best Solution is More C0 2 and
Increasing Temperature
In the long list of potential problems from global warming, the
risks to world agriculture stand out as among the most important.
— William R. Cline, Peterson Inst,
for Int. Econ and Center for
Global Development
Climate change is the biggest threat to our chances of winning the
fight against hunger.
— Winnie Byanyima, Executive
Director of Oxfam International
A widely referenced paper in The Lancet predicted more than a half¬
million extra deaths by 2050, on account of famines caused by climate
change. The author suggested that “climate change mitigation could
prevent many climate-related deaths” and that negative dietary changes
could “exceed other climate-related health impacts” (Springmann 2016).
The implication is that, unless we embrace a low-carbon game plan now,
we shall be directly responsible for deaths around the world. I certainly do
not want to bear that burden. I’m sure you don’t either. So let’s take a look
at the data.
85
Bear in mind that this prediction, and numerous other studies
predicting famines, are based on exaggerated temperature models, and an
assumed link to increasing droughts and heat waves that might cut food
production. Yet, in the past, warmer weather has always meant more crops,
while cooler times have led to famines and mass depopulations.
We shall see in this section that more C0 2 in the air and rising
temperatures are already leading to plenty, not famine. By every important
metric, global food production is growing—and growing not in spite of our
changing climate but, in part, because of it. Warmer weather lengthens
growing seasons and increases water vapor. C0 2 fertilization makes trees
and plants more resistant to drought and fosters their growth, along with
increasing the soil moisture around the world.
Inconvenient Fact 36
More C0 2 in the atmosphere means more food for everyone.
Take another look at Figure 1-15 on Page 20. It shows that increasing
C0 2 in the air to twice its pre-industrial concentration will benefit the 45
crops that constitute 95% of world food production. Based on this and
hundreds of other research studies, we can expect C0 2 fertilization to boost
food production significantly. The biomass of the top ten food crops would
grow by more than a third if C0 2 concentration were to reach 600 parts per
million. Idso (2013) has estimated that the C0 2 -driven increase in the yield
of the 45 crops in Figure 1-15 in the 50 years 1961 - 2011 was worth $3
trillion.
Inconvenient Fact 37
The Earth is becoming greener, not turning into desert.
As we saw in Figure II-3, research has revealed that, over the last 25
years, the Earth has been growing greener, not turning into a desert (de
Jong 2013). Confirmation of this comes from a recent study using satellite
data from NASA showing increasing leaf cover over the last 35 years
(Figure II-l 1). According to Zhu (2016) 25% to 50% of the Earth’s surface
has shown significant greening, while only 4% of the globe is browning.
86
Importantly, the authors attribute the bulk of the greening to C0 2
fertilization effect.
Inconvenient Fact 38
Growing seasons are lengthening.
Warming temperatures are benefiting agricultural food production
through lengthening growing seasons, which allow additional plantings
(see Figure 11-12). Killer frosts end earlier in the spring and arrive later in
the autumn.
Inconvenient Fact 39
More C0 2 and warmer weather mean more world food production.
The world’s remarkable ability to increase food production year after
year is attributable to mechanization, agricultural innovation, C0 2
fertilization and warmer weather. World grain production and amount
harvested per acre (Figures 11-13 & 11-14) show that crop and food
production has steadily increased, with only positive effects from our
changing climate.
87
Figure 11-11 :How green is my planet? C0 2 is making it greener.
Change in leaf area, 1982-2015
< -30% < -15% -5% +5% +15% +25% +35% > +50%
(modified from Zhu 2016, permission R Myeni)
Figure ll-12:Trend in length of growing season (1981 -2006)
1 . .I <<u
□
+2 Longer
Shorter .1
Trend in length of growing season
(modified from de Jong 2011)
Figure 11-13:World grain production, C0 2 concentration and temperature, 1961
-2014
(Source data: grain: UN FAO 2017, CO 2 : Tans 2017,
temperature: HadCRUT4 2017)
Figure 11-14: Bushels of grain per acre harvested worldwide, 1936/37 -2016/17
1926/27 1936/37 1946/47 195&57 1966/67 1976/77 1986/87 1996/97 2006/07 2016/17
Year
11 Global C0 2 emissions
10 (billion metric tons)
9
(Acres planted and grain: USDA 2017, C0 2 : Boden 2016)
According to the USDA, com is the largest component of the global
grain trade, and the United States is the world’s largest producer. Com is
thus one of the country’s most important agricultural products, processed
89
as sweet corn, cornmeal, tortillas, high-fructose corn syrup and, thankfully,
bourbon. It also is the primary feedstock to fatten our cattle, chickens and
hogs. Again, in Figure 11-15, we see significant increases year after year,
rather than the negative impacts predicted by the doommongers.
Figure 11-15:C0 2 emissions go up, up goes U.S. corn production
(Source data: Corn: UMiss 2011; CO 2 : Boden 2016)
Corn production in the U.S. presents a conundrum for environmental
activists. On the one hand, there is significant fear-mongering over
predicted declines in food productivity based on questionable climate
models. On the other hand, the enemies of fossil fuels promote ethanol
production to replace our oil-based transportation fuels. Every acre of corn
diverted to ethanol production is an acre that is no longer feeding the
world’s hungry. In 2008, Herr Jean Ziegler, the United Nations’
Rapporteur for the Right to Food, claimed that “to divert land from food
production to biofuels is a crime against humanity.”
The share of corn production devoted to ethanol production in the U.S.
has sky-rocketed from just a few percent in the late 1990s to 39% recently.
Meanwhile, the government mandated that 42% of the crop be dedicated to
ethanol in 2016. Driven by unneeded environmentalist demands, the U.S.
90
is increasingly moving toward fueling its cars with a food product at the
expense of nutrition for the world’s poorest.
Figure 11-16:11.S. corn feeds cars, not people, 1980/81 - 2016/17
OOOOOOOIO^OOOH H
0 > 010 > 0 ) 0)00000
HHHHHNNNNN
Year
(modified from USDA 2017)
Summary — Food Abundance
If more C0 2 and warmer weather were going to cause a decline in world¬
wide food production, should there not have been some recognizable
negative effects by now, after 150 years? Contrary to predictions, all the
signs point to robust food production, which will increase far into the
foreseeable future. We can be grateful for a combination of rising
temperatures and increasing carbon dioxide—unless, that is, we return to
the low temperatures of the Little Ice Age.
Heat and Life, Cold and Death
Heat waves could be an average of 10°F hotter by the end of the
century.
— Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC) 2017
91
Global warming is bringing more frequent and severe heat waves,
and the result will be serious for vulnerable populations. That
means air pollution in urban areas could get worse, bringing
increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks.
Children, the elderly, poor, and people of color are especially
vulnerable to these effects.
— Dr. Amanda Staudt, National
Wildlife Federation climate
scientist
The assessment that man-made global warming will lead to massive
increases in heat waves and heat-related deaths is stated as fact by every
governmental climate agency and group promoting a link between
increasing C0 2 and the warming of the last century. The National Climate
Assessment (2014) said, “The number of heat waves has been increasing in
recent years.” The reliably unreliable U.S. Global Change Research
Program makes the following assertions (USGCRP 2009):
Increases in morbidity and mortality from extreme heat are very
likely;
Temperatures are rising and the probability of severe heat waves is
increasing;
Rare and extreme heat waves will become much more common;
Heat is already the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the
United States.
Are these assertions correct? What does the science tell us? In this
chapter, we shall review the historical records and the inconvenient
scientific facts about extreme heat waves, giving you enough data to make
a reasonable judgment for yourself.
Inconvenient Fact 40
EPA: Heat waves are not becoming more frequent.
We shall start with the EPA’s own data (2016b) which show no
increase in heat waves in recent years. Instead, there was a remarkable
92
spike in extreme heat waves in the 1930s, long before we could have
affected the climate to any significant degree (Figure 11-17).
Figure ll-17:Nature, not C0 2 emissions, drives heatwaves
Year
(Heatwave: EPA 2016b, CO 2 : Boden 2016)
John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville is the State
Climatologist and provides useful charts of high temperatures (Christy
2015). Figure 11-18 shows the percentage of days that exceeded 100°F at
almost 1,000 NOAA stations across the United States. Note that the lower
48 states of the U.S. have seen an 80-year decline in extreme heat.
Inconvenient Fact 41
Extreme heat events are declining.
There has been a distinct, long-term decrease from the excessively hot
temperatures of the 1930s. Figure 11-19, a summary of 130 years of daily
maximum summer temperatures in Alabama, confirms a decline in
extreme heat waves in the southeastern U.S. since the 19 th Century.
Inconvenient Fact 42
Cold kills far more people than heat every year.
93
Climate extremists predict that heat waves and high temperatures
related to global warming will kill increasingly more people worldwide.
As usual, the inconvenient facts are otherwise. If the merchants of doom
were right, the warming over the last 150 years should have been reflected
in more deaths caused by heat waves.
(Heat: modified from Christy 2015, Source C0 2 : Boden 2016)
94
Figure 11-19: In Alabama peak daily temperature fell from 1883-2014.
(modified from Christy 2015)
The inconvenient fact is that cold kills considerably more people than
heat. It is, by far, the biggest weather-related killer worldwide. Warmer
weather would mean far fewer premature temperature-related deaths.
A study of temperature-associated mortality in the U.K. and Australia
found that cold-related deaths in the U.K. and Australia accounted for 61
and 33 deaths per million, respectively, while heat-related deaths were
only three and two per million (Vardoulakis 2014). Cold kills more than 15
times as many people in these countries as heat.
In the largest study to date on deaths attributable to heat or cold,
Gasparrini (2015) and a large team of collaborators from around the world
examined more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and
2012. Warm countries included Thailand and Brazil; temperate countries
included Australia; cold countries included Sweden. The aim was to
determine the number of deaths attributable to either heat or cold.
The study revealed that cold weather kills 20 times as many people as
heat. Worse, one in 15 deaths, from all causes, was attributable to cold.
Only one death in 250 was attributable to heat. In every country examined,
cold-related deaths greatly outnumbered deaths from heat (Fig. 11-20).
95
Figure 11-20:Cold weather, not hot weather, is the real killer.
Note that, in Figure 11-20, by far the largest number of temperature-
related deaths comes from moderate cold. Of course, moderate cold occurs
far more frequently than extreme cold: but these figures show, and show
clearly, that even a modest decrease in temperature is more likely to kill,
while even a large increase is not.
Inconvenient Fact 43
Warmer weather means many fewer temperature-related deaths.
Inconvenient Fact 44
Warmer weather prevents millions of premature deaths each year.
In the United States, summer heat-related deaths have declined
dramatically (Fig. 11-21) in the last half of the 20 th century (Kalkstein 2011
and Davis 2003).
96
Figure 11-21 :Warmer weather, yet fewer deaths from warmer weather
(Kalkstein 2011 and Davis 2003; modified from Michaels 2012)
Between 1979 and 2006, United States annual death rates from heat
declined by 10%, while deaths from cold fell by a dramatic 37% (Goklany
2009). In fact, extreme-weather deaths and death rates have been tumbling
since the 1920s, notwithstanding the modest global warming since then
(Figure 11-22).
“Excess winter mortality” is the statisticians’ description of premature
deaths from cold. The British Office for National Statistics studied such
deaths for recent winters in England and Wales and found that 24,300
excess winter deaths had occurred during the winter of 2015 - 16.
Importantly, the British statisticians found a strong and persistent decline
in excess winter mortality over the past 60 years. Only half as many die
before their time in winter today as did in the 1950s (Fig. 11-23).
People are dying of cold in Britain today not so much because the
weather is cold as because their homes are cold. Following a “green”-
driven tripling of energy prices over the past two decades, in order to
subsidize otherwise uneconomic windmills, many of those who died did so
because they could no longer afford to heat their homes. It is safe to say
that far more people have died worldwide as a result of no doubt well-
intentioned, but misguided, “save-the-planef ’ policies, than have died as a
result of modest global warming.
A study by the European Union predicts that a future reduction in
97
deaths from cold will significantly outweigh any increase in deaths from
heat (Ciscar 2009). By that year, the author predicts, 162,000 additional
premature deaths per year from heat will be outweighed by the predicted
256,000 deaths per year from cold that would be prevented (Fig. 11-24). In
Europe alone, the study predicts that close to 100,000 people a year would
be spared an untimely death—thanks to global warming. That being the
case, we should all welcome the increasing warmth that will lengthen the
global average life span.
Disingenuous statements such as those issued from the U.S. Global
Change Research Program that increased mortality from extreme heat was
“very likely,” and that “some reduction in the risk of death related to
extreme cold is expected.” The statistics tell us that temperature-related
deaths are decreasing around the world and that the decline in cold-linked
mortality is particularly dramatic. And that—except in the world of climate
extre mi sm—is a very good thing.
Figure 11-22:11.S. annual extreme-weather deaths and death rates tumble.
(modified from Goklany 2009)
98
Figure 11-23:Good news—cold is killing fewer Britons
Figure ll-24:The more the global warming, the fewer the predicted deaths from
temperature
Increase in deaths from heat in Europe by 2080
2020s
2080s 2.5°C
2080s 3.9°C
■ 26400
58500
- 1
0
1 161700
2080s 4.1 °C
2080s 5.4°C
3800
0 20.000 40.000 60.000 80.000 100.000 120.000 140.000 160.000 180.000
Decrease in deaths from cold in Europe by 2080
-101100 1
2020s
2080s 2.5°C
-184
2080s 3.9°C
-1897
2080s 4.1 °C
2080s 5.4°C
- 1 -
r
-300,000 -250.000 -200,000 -150.000 -100,000 -50,000 0
(modified from Ciscar 2009)
99
Inconvenient Fact 45
More C0 2 and warmth mean shorter, less intense heat waves.
We have seen in the chapters on food shortages, forest fires, and
drought, that the combination of higher C0 2 concentration and warmer
weather is boosting soil moisture worldwide, because of increased water
vapor and the C0 2 fertilization of plants. Studies of European heat waves
from 1970 - 2000 (Fischer 2007a), and especially of the devastating
European heat wave of 2003 (Fischer 2007b), found that decreased soil
moisture was the primary cause. They estimated that the warming might
have been 40% less with normal soil moisture. The conclusion: if the soil
had not been unusually dry, “summer 2003 would still have been warm,
but it would not have been such a devastating event as it turned out to be.”
100
Figure ll-25:As temperature dropped, U.K. deaths increased—and vice versa.
Mean daily deaths ^ 5-year average daily deaths
— Mean monthly temperature 5-year average temperature
18
16
14
12 P
a>
10 3
8 |
E
4
2
0
August October December February April June
2015 2015 2015 2016 2016 2016
(U.K. Office for National Statistics 2017)
Summary — A Warm Climate Is Good for Us
The facts starkly challenge the contention that warmer weather kills. The
truth is that warmer weather has already cut temperature-related deaths,
and will continue to do so, directly raising life expectancies around the
world. The facts and the data demonstrate exactly the opposite of what the
prognosticators of climate doom predict. If this important element of the
alarmist campaign is so easily debunked by so many scientific studies,
shouldn’t one also look with a critical eye at all the other hobgoblins of
alarm?
In a Whirl About Tornadoes
The recent trend of severe and lethal tornadoes are (sic) part of a
101
global trend toward more storms.
— Paul Epstein, in The Atlantic,
July 8,2011
It is irresponsible not to mention climate change in the context of
these extreme tornadoes.
— Dr. Kevin Trenberth, US
National Center for Atmospheric
Research
The amount of tornadoes...it’s like three times the highest amount
ever before, right? Something weird is happening with all of these
natural catastrophes.
— Rosie O’Donnell on Rosie Radio,
May 26, 2011
Tornadoes are particularly feared in the United States because they kill and
injure more U.S. citizens than any other type of storm. While many other
countries are spared the twisters’ wrath, the United States is the world
leader in the number of tornadoes per year—1,250—with Canada trailing
in a distant second place, with just 100. Other countries, most of them in
mid-latitudes, have tornadoes as well (Fig. 11-26).
102
Figure ll-26:Tornadoes world distribution
(NOAA 2017a)
The unique geography of the U.S. makes it tornado-prone. The Rocky
Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico provide the key ingredients for
formation of the severe thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes: warm, moist
air close to the ground; cool, dry air aloft; and horizontal winds that travel
faster aloft than near the surface.
NOAA (2017b) says early historic records of tornadoes are unreliable:
“One of the main difficulties with tornado records is that a tornado, or
evidence of a tornado, must have been observed. Unlike rainfall or
temperature, which may be measured by a fixed instrument, tornadoes are
short-lived and very unpredictable. A tornado in a largely unoccupied
region is not likely to be documented. Many significant tornadoes may not
have made it into the historical record, since Tornado Alley was very
sparsely populated during the early 20th Century.”
With increasing population, Doppler radar detection and better
reporting, the number of tornadoes identified has significantly increased in
recent years. Because of this, NOAA recommends only using the strongest
tornadoes as a measure of pre-radar numbers. Large and violent tornadoes
might well have been identified even in days before better reporting was in
place. Figure 11-30 shows a tornado’s rank.
103
Inconvenient Fact 46
The number of tornadoes is decreasing.
Inconvenient Fact 47
The number of tornadoes in 2016 was the lowest on record.
The chart below of these very strong tornadoes (>F 3.0) shows
declining numbers of tornadoes over the last 60 years (Fig. 11-27).
The year 2016 ended with the lowest tornado count that NOAA (2016)
has ever recorded (Figure 11-28). How can that be? Isn’t climate change
supposed to be increasing these storms? The answer—not that you will
hear it in the biased news media—is No. Outside the tropics (and probably
within the tropics, too), storminess of all kinds is expected to decrease
gently with warmer weather, because it is differentials between
temperatures that cause storms, and warming reduces those differentials.
Greater improvements in detection and early warning are the primary
reason that deaths per million due to tornadoes in the U.S. have been in a
long-term decline (Figure 11-29), but a decline in the number of the storms
surely cannot hurt.
104
Figure ll-27:Severe tornadoes (F 3+) are less frequent than 50 years ago.
140
130
120
110
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Year
(Tornadoes NOAA 2017b, C0 2 : Boden 2016)
Figure 11-28:2016—Lowest number of tornadoes according to NOAA
105
Global C0 2 emissions (billion metric tons)
Figure 11-29:11.S. tornado deaths per million population
1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
Year
(Modified from Doswell 1999)
Inconvenient Fact 48
Deaths from tornadoes are falling.
That the science, the facts and the data show absolutely no correlation
between tornadoes and rising temperatures over the last half-century and
more has not stopped climate extremists from linking nearly every tornado
catastrophe to global warming. Rosie O’Donnell, hardly a scientist, can be
forgiven for making uninformed comments linking tornadoes to climate
change. The scientific community has no such excuse.
106
Figure ll-30:The Fujita tornado scale
F
0
1
2
3
4
5
Fastest % mile
(mph)
40-72
73-112
113-157
158-207
208 - 260
261-318
Fastest 3-seoond
gust (mph)
45-78
79-117
118-161
162-209
210-261
262-318
(NOAA 2017c)
Hurricanes — Politicizing Tragedy
The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed
Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global
warming.
— Ross Gelbspan, Boston Globe op¬
ed, August 30, 2005
It’s not a pretty picture, hurricanes could become more intense as
the Earth warms. They are frightening, destructive and extremely
costly, and we expect future hurricanes to leave an even greater
trail of damage in their wake.
— Michael Oppenheimer, Professor
of Geosciences, Princeton
University
The intensity, frequency, and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes,
as well as the frequency of the strongest hurricanes, have all
increased since the early 1980s. Hurricane intensity and rainfall
are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.
— National Climate Assessment,
2014
Alarmists have been predicting an increase in the frequency, intensity and
duration of hurricanes since they first started linking humankind’s C0 2
emissions to global warming. We are guaranteed that every hurricane or
tropical depression that makes landfall will be accompanied by extensive
media coverage, with claims of a link between the latest storm tragedies
and global warming. The theory behind the connection between warming
107
and hurricane activity is superficially plausible. Global warming raises
ocean surface temperatures, fueling tropical cyclones and hurricanes. That
seems to be a perfectly reasonable prediction. Yet the facts say otherwise.
Promoters of the notion that warming worsens hurricanes, including
the authors of the National Climate Assessment of 2014, often refer to a
chart (Figure 11-31) of the North Atlantic hurricane power-dissipation
index. This index is an aggregate of factors that measure total hurricane
power over a hurricane season. They concluded that there was a “strong
upward trend” in the Atlantic region. But they were not telling the whole
story.
Patrick Michaels points out in his book, Lukewarming (2015), how odd
it was that the dataset only began in 1970 and, still more curiously, ended
in 2009. This was despite the fact there was long-term data available
before 1970, and four additional seasons with no land-falling storms after
2009. Michaels provides a longer-term evaluation of the power-dissipation
index from Dr. Ryan Maue, this time showing the full dataset, including
the recent years with no land-falling Atlantic hurricanes. The “upward
trend” of the Climate Assessment was, in reality, no uptrend at all (Fig. II-
32).
Michaels concluded: “Datasets should be viewed in their entirety, not
cherry-picked.”
To make things even more inconvenient for the alarmists, the authors
of the study which provided the data for Figure 11-31 wrote: “We were not
able to corroborate the presence of upward trends in hurricane intensity
over the past two decades in any basin other than the Atlantic. Since the
Atlantic basin accounts for less than 15% of global hurricane activity, this
result poses a challenge to hypotheses that directly relate globally
increasing tropical SST (surface sea temperature) to increases in long-term
mean global hurricane intensity” (Kossin 2007).
The authors of the National Climate Assessment not only used cherry-
picked data: they misstated the conclusions reached by the authors of the
dataset.
Inconvenient Fact 49
There has been no increase in frequency of hurricanes in recent
data.
108
Figure 11-31:Cherry-picked trends in North Atlantic hurricane power
Year
(USGCRP 2014, adapted from Kossin 2007)
Figure ll-32:The true long-term trend in North Atlantic hurricanes PDI
Year
(Maue 2016, modified from Michaels 2015)
Below are two charts showing global hurricane and tropical storm data
compiled by Dr. Ryan Maue (Figures 11-33 and 11-34). The charts show no
109
rising trend. In fact, a compelling argument could be made for a decline
over the last 30 years or more.
Figure 11-33: Frequency of global hurricanes and major hurricanes
(Maue 2017)
Figure 11-34:Global tropical storm and hurricane frequency is falling.
> 120
O
* 100
S" i'
« « 80
c o>
O c
j. Tropical storms
l*—— _ Downtrend 1970 - ?ni7
yr— - Downtrend 1970 - \oi7 ^
Updated to May 31, 2017
Dr. Ryan Maue
1970 1976 1982 1988 1994 2000 2006 2012 2
Year
(Modified from Maue 2017)
Inconvenient Fact 50
We have seen 250 years of declining hurricane frequency.
no
As further confirmation that there is no upward trend in hurricane
frequency, intensity or duration, researchers at the National University of
Mexico reviewed data going back to the year 1749 and found that “from
1749 to 2012 the linear trend in the number of hurricanes is decreasing”
(Rojo-Garibaldi 2016, Figure 11-35).
So what are promoters of warm-ology to do when they just can’t get
the data to cooperate with their preconceived notions? The answer is to
fund more studies. In this case, researchers from Florida State conducted a
study that used complex climate models (recall how well those have
worked out) to predict that hurricanes will become fewer but more intense
(Kang 2015). Climate Armageddon proponents have latched onto this idea
of “fewer but bigger” storms to continue to promote fear.
Christopher Landsea, a meteorologist for the National Hurricane
Center, has quantified what an increase in the intensity of major
hurricanes, driven by global-warming, may mean (Landsea 2011). His
work indicates that the warming over the last several decades translates
into an increase in intensity of about 1%. For a Category 5 hurricane like
Katrina, the wind speed would increase by 1 to 2 mph. He wrote: “The 1-2
mph change currently in the peak winds of strong hurricanes due to
manmade global warming is so tiny that it is not measurable by our aircraft
and satellite technologies available today, which are only accurate to about
10 mph (~15 kph) for major hurricanes.”
In other words, the estimated increase in hurricane strength is too small
to be significant.
Inconvenient Fact 51
No significant increase in hurricane intensity due to warming
ill
Figure 11-35:Hurricane frequency fell for more than 250 years.
(Rojo 2016)
Polar Bears are Doing Just Fine, Thank You
Climate change is drowning and starving polar bears. If
greenhouse gas-fueled climate change keeps melting their sea-ice
habitat, an Arctic apocalypse will wipe them out in a century—and
they’ll disappear from the United States by 2050.
— Center for Biological Diversity
Our analyses highlight the potential for large reductions in the
global polar-bear population if sea-ice loss continues, which is
forecast by climate models and other studies
— IPCC (2013)
In May 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear,
Ursus maritimus, as a threatened species under the Endangered Species
Act, predicting that bear populations would decline by two-thirds as the
sea ice they rely on for hunting continued to shr ink . This conclusion was
not based on evidence that the numbers of these iconic animals were
declining—the opposite was the case—but they were put on the list based
on predicted future dangers, using the flawed climate models discussed in
previous chapters.
112
The Fish and Wildlife Service’s thesis is that:
- sea ice is shrinking because of global warming.
- polar bears need sea ice to hunt seals.
- cuddly polar bears will starve or drown unless we change our evil
ways.
ft
) A,
Patrick Michaels, the Cato Institute’s senior fellow, disputed the
science behind the decision, saying, “This marks the first instance of a
species being listed based upon a computer model of future climate.”
Again, we will look at the science, the facts and data, to get to the truth
regarding our great, white, furry friends. As we shall see, the data are
entirely inconvenient for environmentalist groups trying to raise donations
on the pretext that polar bears are on the brink of extinction.
Far from becoming extinct polar bear populations are doing well, in
fact:
Polar-bear populations are increasing;
Polar bears in regions with the greatest ice loss are thriving;
Polar bears survived a previous much warmer period.
It is difficult and dangerous to assess the population of polar bears
accurately. Their home turf is mostly barren, snowy, windswept terrain
that is inhospitable to humans, whose census-taking bears do not welcome.
113
Also, humans apparently taste a lot like seal, or enough so that we are on
the bear menu.
Despite these challenges, the most recent population studies actually
indicate that polar bear populations are rising fast and are at a 50-year high
(Fig. 11-36). A recent report by Susan Crockford, a noted polar bear expert,
reveals that the current population of 22,000 to 31,000 is the highest
estimate in more than 50 years.
Figure ll-36:There are almost four times as many polar bears as in 1960.
35,000
§ 30,000
■5 25,000
O 20,000
Q.
ro 15,000
0)
■2 10,000
n
£ 5,000
0
I960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Year
(Modified from Crockford 2015)
Inconvenient Fact 52
The population of polar bears is growing.
Inconvenient Fact 53
There are more polar bears now than we’ve had for 50 years.
A recent review of Canadian polar bears found stable or increasing
numbers in 12 of 13 sub-populations (York 2016, Figure 11-37). The
researchers concluded: “We do not find support for the perspective that
polar bears within or shared with Canada are currently in any sort of
climate crisis.” That is quite a bit different than anything you have likely
read or heard about concerning this issue.
114
Figure ll-37:Twelve of 13 regional polar bear populations are thriving.
(York 2016)
Inconvenient Fact 54
Polar bears are thriving even where sea ice is diminishing.
Extraordinarily inconvenient recent results of polar bear research do
not support the narrative that decreasing sea ice is detrimental to the bears’
health (Rode 2014). In fact, they appear to be quite fat and happy in areas
of high ice loss. Rode’s study compared bears in the Chukchi and Beaufort
Seas, bounding Alaska and Russia (Fig. 11-38). The Chukchi Sea had lost
twice as much ice as the Beaufort Sea. The researchers had expected that
the Chukchi Sea bears would have suffered, yet they found just the
opposite.
By every metric, the authors found that bears in the region that had the
most ice loss were healthier and fatter than in the area with less ice loss.
The females were heavier by almost 70 pounds (30 kg), and males by 110
pounds (50 kg). See Figure 11-39, below.
Chukchi sows had larger litters with higher survival rates, and
yearlings’ weight exceeded their counterparts in the Beaufort Sea by nearly
50 pounds (25 kg). The researchers concluded that less ice led to “higher
115
ecosystem productivity,” that is, more critters to eat.
Amusingly, the researchers—having not found the result that they, or
their funding sources had expected—ended their report by wondering
about the difficulty of “messaging this complexity to the public.”
We didn’t have to wait very long to see how this combination of less
ice and healthier bears would be conveyed by the promoters of climate
doom to the public: A June 2017 study by the USGS and the University of
Wyoming (Durner 2017) concluded that bears in areas of high ice loss
would need to consume more calories through increased foraging and
would need to kill 2% to 6% more seals to make up for it.
Figure 11-38: Polar bears are thriving in high ice-loss areas.
The shallow Chukchi Sea
has lost twice as much ice as
the deep Beaufort Sea, yet
polar bears thrive there.
-Arctic Ocean
Alaska
Siberia
(Map adapted from Wikimaps)
116
Figure 11-39: Male polar bear weight comparison of the two populations
(modified from Rode 2013)
AP’s reporting on this latest study confirmed that man’s consumption
of fossil fuels almost certainly will lead to the bears’ extinction. Not until
800 words into the AP story, near the end, do we get this hidden gem:
“Bears in the Chukchi Sea, off Alaska’s northwest coast, had to walk
farther and burn more calories than south Beaufort bears but are in better
shape because more food is available .”
So it appears that the “simple bear necessities” may not actually
include ice.
Indeed, it will be a lot harder to raise money for the World Wildlife
Fund once it gets out that warmer temperatures mean more polar bears.
The bears, after all, originated on land and migrated to the ice about
150,000 years ago. Like us, they are warm-blooded creatures. Like us, they
prefer warmer to colder weather.
Finally, we have seen from the chapter on temperatures that several
climate optima (that is, warming periods) in our current interglacial period
had much higher temperatures than we enjoy today, and there was
probably a lot less polar sea ice then than now. In fact, the last interglacial
period, more than 120,000 years ago, was 8°C (14°F) warmer than today,
with no polar ice at all (Dahl-Jensen 2013). Yet the polar bear survived.
117
The bears will survive in our own time, too, as long as hunting—the
only real threat to them—is carefully controlled. So rest easy, polar bear
enthusiasts, your great, white friends will do quite nicely in a warming
world.
Ocean Acidity — Climate pHraud
Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is
threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.
— James Hansen, Director of the
Program on Climate Science,
Columbia University Earth
Institute
Ocean acidification is climate change’s equally evil twin.
— Jane Lubchenco, former Head of
NOAA
Ocean “acidification,” the latest climate hobgoblin to be advanced as a
result of increasing C0 2 levels, began to be heavily promoted as the “evil
twin” of global warming when it became clear that the 25-year warming
trend of the late 20th Century had ended, and a long pause in temperature
increase had begun. Ocean “acidification” became the fallback pretext for
the anti-fossil-fuel agenda, just in case its specter of a sizzling Earth
collapsed under the weight of evidence against it.
This chapter is somewhat more technical than the others, but the detail
is necessary if you are to see why the climate extremists are just as wrong
on ocean chemistry as they are on atmospheric physics.
Before 2004, very little attention had been focused on ocean
“acidification,” but that all changed quite suddenly. Howard Browman of
the Institute of Marine Research did a thorough study and found that,
though there had been no learned papers on the subject before, from 2006
to 2015 more than 3,100 papers had appeared (Figure 11-40). He called the
explosion of research on the topic “unprecedented in marine sciences” and
reported that nearly all published articles predicted an “acidification”
calamity, while studies that found no link were difficult to publish. There
is no surprise here: “fund it and they will find it.”
118
So what is ocean “acidification?” Here is a quick refresher on acidity,
alkalinity and pH. The measurement of acidity or alkalinity, known as pH
(that is, the proportion of hydrogen ions compared with distilled water),
ranges from very acidic (pH 0), such as battery acid, to very alkaline (pH
14), such as lye or drain cleaner (Fig. 11-41). Neutral is pH 7.0. Rainwater
is quite acidic, at pH 5.4, while seawater is pronouncedly alkaline, at pH
7.8 to 8.1.
Alarm over ocean “acidification” is based on the theory that elevated
atmospheric C0 2 causes more C0 2 to be dissolved into the ocean,
increasing the concentration of carbonic acid, particularly near the surface,
and making it impossible for shelled invertebrates (such as crabs or corals)
to create the calcium carbonate that makes up their shells and
exoskeletons. A further lowering of pH (increasing acidity), so the
extremists say, would begin dissolving the shells of existing creatures,
resulting in an oceanic apocalypse.
Figure 11-40:Academia on acid: papers about the “acid” ocean, 2001 - 2015
Papers published
(Browman 2016)
The “calcifying organisms”—creatures that make their shells or
exoskeletons out of calcium carbonate—already are used to very large
swings in pH on the continental shelves near the mouths of rivers,
119
particularly during floods. The rivers that flow into the bays and estuaries
are often significantly acidified, yet oyster communities thrive in those
areas. In fact, the federal government acknowledges this with a lower
allowable limit of 6.5 (that’s acid) for the Clean Water Act. For example,
the wonderfully delicious oysters from the Chesapeake Bay of the eastern
U.S. do quite nicely in a bay that commonly approaches 7.0 due to river
influx, far lower than the most radical predictions of the alarmists.
Have our oceans been acidic before? Our very earliest oceans, more
than 2 billion years ago, are thought to have been acidic (Halevy 2017).
However, since those earliest oceans, the only time that the ocean was
actually acidic was about 54 million years ago (Zachos 2005). The cause
for that period of acid oceans was attributed by Zachos to a sudden release
of methane, rather than an increase in C0 2 (C0 2 levels were -850 ppm at
that time, much less than the 2,600 ppm average for the Earth’s last 650
million years).
The pH of the ocean varies slightly, depending on season, water depth
and latitude. The pH level trends slightly less alkaline in the tropics, during
the winter, and at depth. According to many estimates, the oceans’ pH has
declined slightly (-0.1 pH) since the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution.
IPCC models predict that ocean alkalinity may decline another 0.3 pH
by the year 2100. Although this level is unlikely to be reached, even if it
were true, the ocean would remain firmly alkaline. In fact, since the
current range of estimates of ocean alkalinity is pH 7.8 - 8.1, the small
change predicted by the alarmists is barely beyond the estimates of
alkalinity today. They dare not predict large changes; instead, they pretend
that the small changes they predict will have large effects.
120
Figure 11-41 :pH values of common substances
Liquid drain cleaner
(pH=14)
Bleach/Oven cleaner
(pH=13.5)
Ammonia Solution
(pH=10.5-11.5)
Baking Soda (pH-
9.5)
Sea water (pH-8)
Distilled water/blood (pH=7)
MilkAJrine/Saliva
(pH=6.3-6.6)
Black coffee (pH=5)
Grapefruit/tomato
juice/soda (pH=2.5-3.5)
Lemon juice/vinegar
(PH=2)
Battery acid (pH=0)
The prediction of increasing acidity and the doom of the sea is based
almost entirely on models that use the following reasoning:
More C0 2 => more carbonic acid => more acidic oceans => seashells
dissolve
Modeling studies show that the pH of the oceans would need to drop
by two full units, or to a pH of 6.0, for carbonate to dissolve at current
temperatures (Segalstad 2008). Even the most extreme projections of
decreasing alkalinity do not forecast that the oceans will approach neutral,
let alone become truly acidic.
These models can predict pH in the controlled settings of a university
laboratory, but not so much in the real world. The models do not take into
account various processes which act to modify or “buffer” any increase in
carbonic acid. The primary buffering agents are the chemical reactions of
121
limestones and other minerals in ocean water. Limestones (CaC03) are
among the primary rocks exposed on the surface of the Earth and beneath
her oceans. Their presence guarantees that under modern conditions the
oceans cannot become acidic—and certainly nowhere near as acidic as the
rainwater that falls on them daily.
Carbonic acid reacts to limestones on land and at sea to increase the
alkalinity, and add calcium to streams and oceans. Other minerals also add
significant buffering as a backstop to the limestone reactions. According to
Idso (2014), “they constitute an almost in fini te buffer capacity.”
Several other important factors act to buffer changes in ocean pH, but
are not included in the models. For instance, warmer water and increasing
C0 2 are expected to increase algal photosynthesis, which has been shown
to increase the alkalinity of the ocean significantly. Some climate
modelers are all too anxious to include variables which fit their
preconceived notions, calling them “multiplier effects,” but conveniently
avoid them when they might disprove their theories. Note that, even with
the most radical modeling of lower pH, the oceans remain significantly
alkaline and cannot even approach neutrality at pH 7.0.
The terminology used is critically important. Climate extremists do not
talk of a “slight decrease in alkalinity. ” That would not strike fear into the
gullible hearts of the environmental fringe, for whom environmentalism
appears to have become a substitute for true religion. Another way that the
lessening of pH could be described would be to say that the oceans are
becoming “less caustic.” That, however, would put a positive spin on the
matter, not at all what the alarmists intend. The term “ocean acidification”
conveys the notion of a looming oceanic catastrophe, and it is on this basis
that alarmists promote substantial and needless increases in the cost and
regulation of energy.
Before we look at the science which will categorically disprove the
notion of ocean “acidification,” we should first look at some of the studies
that peddle the doomsday scenario.
The most widely referenced chart concerning “acidification” is a
comparison of the pH and dissolved C0 2 in the area north of Hawaii
(Figure 11-42). It shows a slight decline in pH and a steady increase of C0 2
over a period of nearly 30 years. As we shall see in Figure 11-44, pH has
been rising and falling in 50-year cycles with the last peak of alkalinity
122
occurring in the mid-1960s, This 30-year record is just not long enough to
make confident predictions about long-term trends.
A controversial and widely cited paper on the subject is Feely (2006),
showing a graph linking decreasing pH to increasing C0 2 . The graph
shows “historic” and projected pH from 1850 to 2100, and the chart
predicts that by 2100 pH levels will be down to 7.9 (which, incidentally,
would still be quite alkaline). Unfortunately, while the graph is still
available on the NOAA website (Feeley 2006) neither NOAA nor the
author would provide permissions to use in this book.
Figure ll-42:Too pHew data points for linkage
Year
(NOAA PMEL 2017, adapted from Dore 2009)
Here is why:
In 2010 this work earned the author a trip to testify to Congress and a
Heinz Family Foundation award worth $100,000. The citation said:
“Ocean acidity is now considered global warming’s ‘evil twin,’ thanks in
large measure to Dr. Feely’s seminal research on the changing ocean
chemistry and its impact on marine ecosystems.”
123
An enterprising, young PhD candidate at the University of New
Mexico by the name of Mike Wallace looked closely into the work of
Feely and his co-authors, finding that the supposedly “historic” data was
nothing of the sort. Wallace observed that Feeley had only used real-world,
measured data from 1990 to 2015. He had ignored real-world
measurements dating back at least a century.
Feeley’s graph was generated using climate modeling for the pre-1990
portion of the curve, rather than the actual measurements. When Wallace
graphed the actual data, the “acidifying” trend produced by the model
disappeared.
Wallace questioned Feely’s co-author, Sabine, about why real-world
measurements had been ignored. He was told that, if he continued his line
of questioning, “You will not last long in your career.” Wallace had this to
say about these studies that provide the very basis of the ocean
acidification argument: “In whose professional world is it acceptable to
omit the majority of the data and also not to disclose the omission to any
other soul or Congressional body? (Noon 2016)”
In a true scientific inquiry, real data should always trump models. If
actual hard data are available, there is no need to forecast—unless your
objective is to promote the latest hobgoblin of climate alarmism.
The Historical Record
Just as we saw when reviewing data on temperature and carbon dioxide,
the historical record of what has happened in the real world is a signpost to
the future. The long-term geologic history reveals some very inconvenient
facts for climate alarmists spreading fear that acidic oceans will dissolve
sea-shells. Data from the early climate certainly provide no basis for any
such fear.
Liu (2009) examined corals in the South China Sea and reconstructed
the pH history for the last 7,000 years. Figure 11-43 shows the data from
that study and compares it to the C0 2 history of the same period taken
from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. First, it is apparent that the current
pH values and the rate of decrease are neither unprecedented nor unusual.
In fact, the lowest measured alkalinity was about 6,000 years ago, when
C0 2 levels were one-third below today’s levels. The behavior of the real-
124
world ocean is just the opposite of the behavior predicted by the IPCC and
the merchants of climate doom.
Inconvenient Fact 55
There is no historic correlation between C0 2 and oceanic pH
Pelejero studied the pH history of a reef in the southwestern Pacific Ocean
that provided nearly 300 years of pH data (2005). He found large changes
in pH that varied over 50-year cycles (Figure 11-44). We are nearing the
end of a 50-year downtrend in pH and, if the cycles continue, we may well
see an increase in alkalinity, rather than the “acidification” predicted by
alarmists. The authors noted that there was “no notable trend” toward
lower boron values (boron is a proxy for pH). Also note that the most
recent peak in alkalinity, from 1955 to 1970, occurred despite the fact that
C0 2 emissions had already begun to increase significantly.
Figure 11-43:7,000 years of ocean pH in the South China Sea, and C0 2
(Source data: pH: Liu 2009; C0 2 : Barnola 2003)
125
Figure 11-44: Reconstructed pH history of SW Pacific reef, 1708 - 1988
Year
(pH: modified from Pelejero 2005; Source CCL Boden 2016)
Limestone, one of the most abundant sedimentary rocks on Earth, is
calcium carbonate, as are the shells and exoskeletons of the creatures
allegedly threatened by ocean “acidification.” Limestone is precipitated
from warm ocean waters that are supersaturated with calcium. Break open
a piece of limestone and you are likely to find many fossils of the
forerunners of modern creatures, these ancient creatures also needed
alkaline water to prosper. Therefore, we can use the record of limestone
deposits to see if acidification took place during periods of high C0 2
concentration.
During the Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian periods of the early
Paleozoic era (541 - 416 million years ago), C0 2 usually exceeded 4,000
ppm, reaching a maximum of nearly 8,000 ppm in the Cambrian Period.
The latter was ~20 times today’s concentration. When we compare C0 2
levels to the rock record from the author’s home turf in the Appalachian
Basin of the eastern United States (Fig. 11-45), we find that most of these
C0 2 -enriehed periods were dominated by limestone deposition (Fig 11-46).
Limestone deposition could not have occurred had the oceans been
“acidified.” Most of the limestone was deposited during the periods of
highest C0 2 concentration.
Inconvenient Fact 56
The oceans did not become acidic even with C0 2 at 15 times
modern levels.
126
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Director of the Global Change
Institute and Professor of Marine Science at the University of Queensland,
and an advocate of politically driven science, had this to say concerning
ocean “acidification”:
When CO 2 levels in the atmosphere reach about 500 parts per
million, you put calcification out of business in the oceans.
The fossil record unambiguously shows that this statement is false.
Perhaps the good professor should have walked down the hall and
discussed his musings with one of the many distinguished geology
professors at the university before uttering a statement so easily and
decisively disproved by the fossil record.
Proponents of ocean acidification focus only on the imagined harmful
effects on sea-shells and corals from a supposed significant reduction in
ocean—a decrease that we have seen is not at all likely. They ignore the
many reputable studies that have identified the benefits of increasing C0 2
on oceanic plants, algae and animals, all of which would not be here today
unless they had already long possessed the ability to adapt to far greater
changes in pH than we are capable of causing.
The rational observer would ask:
Why were the oceans not acidified during geological periods when
the Earth’s atmosphere carried up to 20 times today’s C0 2
concentration?
Did the processes which led to the proposed “acidification” really
only begin with the Industrial Revolution?
f27
Atmospheric carbon dioxide (ppm)
Converted from RC0 2 GEOCARB III
Figure 11-45: Limestone was deposited when the C0 2 concentration was
extremely high.
Figure 11-46:Ordovician Black River carbonates laid down when C0 2 was 12
times today’s concentration
(PA DCNR2017)
128
Summary — Ocean Acidity
Predictions of the end of the oceans as we know them from “acidification”
are based entirely on models that assume that oceans possess no
organisms, rocks or dissolved solids that might moderate or buffer any
increase in carbonic acid. Based on the fossil record and paleo-
reconstructions of pH levels, we know that acidification of the oceans did
not occur in the past even during times with C0 2 levels many multiples of
today.
Unless entirely new oceanic chemical processes not yet evident in the
burgeoning scientific literature on ocean “acidification” have mysteriously
begun to operate at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the oceans
will not become “acidified.” The prognosticators of climate apocalypse are
wrong again.
Sea-Level Rise — King Canute Couldn’t Stop It —
Nor Can We
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea
levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-
refugees, ’ threatening political chaos.
— Noel Brown, UN official, June
30, 1989
Sea-level rise may be the most feared calamity associated with global
warming. Because areas that would be affected have large and growing
populations and include many of the world’s economic centers, significant
increases in the sea level could be devastating. Media reports of flooded
cities and coastlines after storms are all too often linked to global warming
and rising sea levels. Nearly every group spreading climate fear
prominently features the specter of flooding from rising oceans.
Media sensationalism is compounded by misrepresentations of
available science and by an unscientific reliance on computer projections
rather than on historical data.
A report for the United Nations’ Environment Program in 2005
129
asserted that there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010, many of
them driven out of their coastal homes by sea-level rise (Myers 2005). The
UN even provided a handy identifier map which included the areas of
highest risk: low-lying islands of the Pacific and Caribbean, and
commented that “some will disappear completely.” Since their predictions
have proven so completely incorrect, the map has since been removed
from their website in order not to thoroughly discredit any of their
subsequent, similarly outrageous, predictions.
In 2011, Gavin Atkins of the Asian Correspondent asked, “What
happened to the climate refugees?” and provided updated population
numbers for some of the most atrisk island nations which the UN had
predicted would be under water now:
Bahamas: the 2010 census showed an increase in population of
>50,000 persons in 10 years;
St. Lucia: 5 per cent increase in population 2001 to 2010;
Seychelles: the number of persons grew by >6,500 from 2002 to 2010;
Solomon Islands: there were 100,000 more people from 2001 to 2010.
So rather than citizens fleeing these “at-risk” islands, they appear to be
thriving quite nicely on islands which are a refuge for those persons
leaving the cold of northern climes.
Undeterred by facts or common sense, the UN is now predicting the
same 50 million climate refugees by the updated timeline of 2020. We
won’t have to wait long now to see how that prediction turns out.
Sea Level — Science, Facts and Data
Over the last six million years of severe icehouse conditions, the primary
driver of sea-level changes were periodic episodes of glaciation. These
locked up huge amounts of water—mainly in the northern latitudes—
drawing down sea levels. During warmer interglacial stages, melting ice
yielded markedly higher seas. According to the U.S. Geological Survey,
the peak glaciation of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago produced sea
levels about 400 feet (140 m) lower than today. Since that point, the
climate has warmed and glaciers have melted, returning water from the
land to the oceans.
130
Figure 11-47 shows reconstructed sea levels dating back to the latter
part of our most recent ice age (Waelbroeck 2002). This chart is plotted
with data on 1,500-year intervals, so it does not capture the detail that later
figures provide. It does show that the most rapid rise occurred during the
first 6,000 to 8,000 years of warming, as the climate transitioned from the
ice age to the interglacial period. Then the rate of rise slowed to a relative
stability that has endured, more or less, to the present.
Figure 11-47:20,000-year sea level reconstruction
Inconvenient Fact 57
Sea-level increase began >15,000 years ago.
The sea level actually fell during the cold of the Little Ice Age, but then
resumed its long-term rise in the late 1700s, in response to the warming
coming out of the depths of the Little Ice Age (Figure 11-48). Acceleration
of sea-level rise kicked in during the mid-1850s and has remained nearly
constant since that time. Bear in mind that the re-initiation and acceleration
of the rise began at times when human-created C0 2 could not have had any
significant effect on temperatures.
131
Between 1901 and 2010, the rise amounted to about 7.5 inches (190
mm) or 0.07 inches (1.8 mm) per year (Houston 2011). The seas began to
rise long before we began our post-World War II increase in C0 2
emissions. This natural sea-level rise will continue whether or not we
reduce our greenhouse-gas emissions.
Since the sea level has been rising for more than 15,000 years, the
question to ask is not, “Is it rising?” but, “Is it rising faster!” Most climate
models predict faster sea-level rise, but tide gauges, which are the most
reliable long-term measurement of rise show no detectable acceleration
since we began adding appreciable amounts of C0 2 to the air in the mid-
20th Century.
Satellite altimetry—measuring the sea level by satellites—was
introduced in 1993 and sea-level rise measured from them shows an
acceleration of rise. There is evidence, however, that the raw satellite data
was adjusted so as to produce the desired acceleration (Momer, 2011); and
the inter-calibration errors between the successive generations of satellites
exceed the total sea-level rise the satellites purport to measure. The bottom
line? The combination of short time frame, calibration errors and apparent
manipulation of the satellite data provide too many questions for us to use
this information with any confidence.
Inconvenient Fact 58
Recent sea-level rise began 150 years before the increase in C0 2 .
Contrary to the predictions of the IPCC and other noted experts,
numerous studies have reported that the sea level is not rising faster. Many
others have documented a slower rise (Holgate 2007; Morner 2011;
Houston 2011). What is undeniable is that IPCC has been compelled to
reduce its sea-level predictions in each successive five-year Assessment
Report (Fig. 11-49).
132
Figure 11-48: More than 200 Years of sea-level rise
(Source data: Jevrejeva 2008)
Figure ll-49:Sea-level rise predictions are failing.
Holgate (2007) reviewed nine long-term records (1904 - 2003)
133
worldwide, and found that the rate of sea-level rise decreased from 1950
onward (Fig. 11-50).
Figure 11-50:Global average sea level from nine records shows decreasing rate
of sea-level rise.
A landmark study of Australian sea-level rise in 2011 (Figure 11-51)
reported that the data “reveals (sic) a consistent trend of weak deceleration
at each of these gauge sites throughout Australasia over the period from
1940 to 2000.” So, contrary to frightening predictions of a rising rate of
increase, we find just the opposite may be occurring.
Further confirmation of a possible deceleration of sea-level rise was a
study of 83 tide gauges by Houston and Dean (2011). Their conclusions
were extremely inconvenient for those predicting the inundation of Miami:
Onr analyses do not indicate acceleration in sea level in U.S. tide
gauge records during the 20th century. Instead, for each time period
we consider, the records show small decelerations that are consistent
with a number of earlier studies of worldwide-gauge records.
134
Figure 11-51 :Sea-level rise at Australian tide gauges is slowing.
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8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
-1
1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Year
Adapted from (Watson 2011). Reproduced with permission of CERF
One of the most common climate myths is that the melting of the
northern polar ice cap will not only lead to the extinction of polar bears,
but cause significant sea-level rise. Actually, the entire north polar ice cap
could melt and the change in the global sea level would be virtually zero.
That is because the ice cap is frozen seawater, floating in the Arctic Ocean.
As the ice melts, water displaces the void left by the formerly frozen H 2 0,
most of which is submerged. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, seven-
eighths of an iceberg is beneath the ocean surface. (Think of the Titanic,
and see Figure 11-52).
Inconvenient Fact 59
Melting the northern polar ice cap would not increase the sea level.
Sea-level change is driven mainly by the melting or accumulation of
ice in land-based mountain or continental glaciers. The bulk of the water
created by the melting of this type of glacier or ice sheet will eventually
find its way to the oceans and cause the level of the sea to rise to some
degree. During ice ages, large amounts of water were locked up in the
glaciers covering primarily the northern latitudes of North America,
Europe and Asia, lowering the level significantly.
135
Figure 11-52: A sea-level test
The important fact that if floating ice melts it does not raise the level of the sea
can be tested by putting some ice cubes in a glass and filling it to a marked
level with water.
Even after the ice melts, the water level is unchanged.
Antarctica today has nine-tenths of the world’s land-based ice mass.
(Greenland has much of the rest.) Paradoxically, Antarctica is also the
Earth’s driest continent. Water vapor across the continent is often near
zero, and very little snow actually falls. The little that does precipitate
stays there, and for a very long time, having built up over hundreds of
thousands of years to a thickness of more than ten thousand feet in some
areas.
So the world’s driest continent has the greatest potential to drive sea-
level rise.
Well-publicized reports of melting ice shelves surrounding the
Antarctic Peninsula have been driving an untrue narrative of a melting
Antarctica. The ice shelves are, like the northern ice cap, afloat. Complete
melting of these would have no effect on the sea level. The media-driven
hype on this subject climaxed after a portion of the Larsen C Ice Shelf
broke away in Mid-July, 2017 and Antarctica became the poster child of
alarm about warmer weather.
The Larsen C crack is only a symptom of a larger problem. Taken
together, recent findings show troubling changes are happening
136
almost everywhere across Antarctica’s massive icy expanse.
— Brian Kahn, Climate Central,
May 2017
With 10 per cent of the world’s population, or 700 million people,
living less than 10 metres above present sea level, an additional
three metres of sea level rise from the Antarctic alone will have a
profound impact on us all.
— Dr. Nick Golledge, senior
research fellow, Antarctic
Research Centre, Victoria.
Why the focus specifically on the Antarctic Peninsula? Alarmists do
this because it appears to be the only area of the continent that is warming.
Numerous studies have reported cooling across the bulk of the Antarctic
continent, with the lone outlier being the Antarctic Peninsula (Comiso
2000, Doran 2002). The Peninsula, however, represents only about 2% of
the Antarctic land mass (Figure 11-53).
137
Figure Il-53:The Antarctic
This Landsat image mosaic of Antarctica (by permission of NASA, 2017) shows
the Antarctic Peninsula at upper left. The peninsula represents little more than
2% of the land mass of the world’s driest continent.
Inconvenient Fact 60
Most of Antarctica is cooling and gaining ice mass.
The cooling of the majority of the continent has increased, rather than
decreased, the area of sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent (Fig. II-
54). The cooling and consequent ice growth is not what the climate
modelers had predicted.
IPCC’s latest high-end projection (IPCC 2013), while much lower than
their previous prognostications, is that the sea level may rise at almost half
an inch per year, or more than 3 feet (11 m) by 2100. This is nearly 6 times
our currently very steady rate of 0.07 inches/year (1.8 mm). Once again,
those advancing a vision of climate apocalypse rely on questionable
models, instead of looking at the data to see what is actually happening.
138
Figure 11-54: Increasing Antarctic sea-ice area
(Illinois University, 2017)
Sea-level rise, which began long before widespread use of fossil fuels,
will continue until the next ice age. And may God help us when that day
arrives. Cold is a killer, where heat, on the whole, is not.
Legislation enacted to halt the rise of the seas would be no more
effective today than it was almost a mille nni um ago, when King Canute
demonstrated the limits of government power to his courtiers by having his
throne set up by the seashore and commanding the sea not to rise. The tide
came in as usual.
King Canute at the shore
139
In 2008, upon receiving the nomination for president, Barack Obama
stated that we could tell future generations, “This was the moment when
the rise of the oceans began to slow.” Well, he may have been correct, but
certainly not because, Canute-like, he had stretched forth his trembling
hand over the ocean and commanded the sea not to rise.
140
Summary — The Benefits of Principled
Inaction
The inconvenient facts in this book support quite a different narrative from
that offered by proponents of apocalyptic human-driven climate change.
On every key topic examined, the evidence, supported by voluminous peer
reviewed studies, reveals that the “consensus” opinion promoted by
climate-apocalypse proponents is consistently at odds with reality. In
chapter after chapter, we learned that scientifically supported truths, as
revealed within “Inconvenient Facts, ” are polar opposites of what we hear
from climate alarmists and their willing accomplices in the media.
Rather than a world quickly diving into a man-made climate hell from
which we cannot return, the Earth, its ecosystems, and we humans are,
instead, thriving. We are thriving because of increasing C0 2 and rising
temperatures not in spite of it.
By every metric reviewed, we have seen that the current changing
climate has led to increasing food production, soil moisture, crop growth
and a “greening” of the Earth. All the while droughts, forest fires, heat
waves and temperature-related deaths have declined substantially. Only the
radical worldview of the environmental extremist could ignore benefits
clearly being accrued from atmospheric changes while embracing harmful
economic policies based on failed climate models.
Yes, there is such a thing as the greenhouse effect. Yes, there has been
some warming. Yes, some of the warming is likely man-made. Yes, some
further man-made warming is to be expected. On all these matters, few
would disagree, for they are all demonstrable.
But no, past and future anthropogenic warming does not mean that
catastrophe will follow, or that measures to prevent global warming are
scientifically and economically justified, or that capitalism should be
blamed for the supposed “crisis”—still less that it should be destroyed
because of spurious science.
From the Inconvenient Facts we have reviewed, the first and most
important conclusion is that the correct policy to address the non-problem
of man-made global warming is to have the courage to do nothing. In this
f 41
case, it takes courage to do nothing. Imagine the enormous pressure on
President Trump to keep the United States in the Paris climate accord.
Worldwide indignation and scorn were heaped on him after his decision to
withdraw from the agreement, yet it was the correct and courageous one to
make. For leaders supporting the Paris agreement, the specter of
catastrophic warming provides the moral justification for ever-higher
taxation, ever-tighter regulation, ever-greater state interference and ever-
diminished private freedom.
Thanks to near-total control of the news media by proponents of a
pending Thermageddon, critical truths are poorly understood and even
derided: the truth that there is no “consensus”, the truth that “consensus”
would not matter even if it existed, the truth that global warming will be
small and largely beneficial, the truth that preventing it would be orders of
magnitude costlier than adapting to it, the truth that the correct policy is to
have the courage to do nothing.
Yet, like it or not, the truth is the truth. Policy should, in the end, be
based on objective truth and not on the back of a lavishly-funded and
elaborate international campaign of crafty—and profitable for some—
falsehoods promoted by the political, financial, corporate, bureaucratic and
media establishments.
Too many scientists have failed to uphold the integrity of their
profession, whether because of willful self-promotion, desperate self-
preservation, ignorance, greed, or fear of ridicule by the high priests of
climate orthodoxy. They have shirked their duty to resist the campaign of
lies and libels perpetrated by a small but influential number of their
colleagues. It will take science many decades to overcome the damage
wrought by this corruption of the scientific community.
If this book can help alert the establishment to the Inconvenient Facts
that A1 Gore and his ilk have found it expedient and profitable to ignore or
to deny, then perhaps steps can be taken towards the urgent restoration of
the primacy of truth in science—and in society.
142
List of Inconvenient Facts
Inconvenient Fact 1
Carbon dioxide is not the primary greenhouse gas.
Inconvenient Fact 2
The warming effect of C0 2 declines as its concentration increases.
Inconvenient Fact 3
First and foremost, C0 2 is plant food.
Inconvenient Fact 4
In last four ice ages, the C0 2 level was dangerously low.
Inconvenient Fact 5
140-million-year trend of dangerously decreasing C0 2
Inconvenient Fact 6
Our current geologic period (Quaternary) has the lowest average
C0 2 levels in the history of the Earth.
Inconvenient Fact 7
More C0 2 means more plant growth.
Inconvenient Fact 8
More C0 2 helps to feed more people worldwide.
Inconvenient Fact 9
More C0 2 means moister soil.
Inconvenient Fact 10
Recent Inconvenient Pause of 18 years in warming, despite rise in
C0 2
143
Inconvenient Fact 11
C0 2 rose after the Second World War, but temperature fell.
REALLY Inconvenient Fact 12
Modern warming began long before SUVs or coal-fired plants.
Inconvenient Fact 13
Melting glaciers and rising seas confirm warming predated
increases of C0 2 .
Inconvenient Fact 14
Temperatures have changed for 800,000 years. It wasn’t us.
Inconvenient Fact 15
Interglacials usually last 10,000-15,000 years. Ours is 11,000 years
old.
Inconvenient Fact 16
Each of the four previous inter-glacial warming periods were
significantly warmer than our current temperature.
Inconvenient Fact 17
The last interglacial, -120,000 years ago, was 8°C (14.4°F) warmer
than today. The polar bears survived. Greenland didn’t melt.
Inconvenient Fact 18
Temperatures changed during the past 10,000 years. It wasn’t us.
Inconvenient Fact 19
Today’s total warming and warming rate are similar to earlier
periods.
Inconvenient Fact 20
It was warmer than today for 6,100 of the last 10,000 years.
Inconvenient Fact 21
144
Our current trend is neither unusual nor unprecedented.
Inconvenient Fact 22
Earth’s orbit and tilt drive glacial-interglacial changes.
Inconvenient Fact 23
We are living in one of the coldest periods in all of Earth’s history.
Inconvenient Fact 24
Earth has not had a geologic period this cold in 250 million years.
Inconvenient Fact 25
The only thing constant about temperatures over 600 million years
is that they have been constantly changing.
(this is a recurring Inconvenient Fact)
Inconvenient Fact 26
For most of Earth’s history, it was about 10 °C (18 °F) warmer than
today.
Inconvenient Fact 27
IPCC models overstate future warming up to three times too much.
Inconvenient Fact 28
For human advancement, warmer is better than colder.
Inconvenient Fact 29
A return to the temperature at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution would lead to famine and death.
Inconvenient Fact 30
Only 0.3% of published scientists stated in their papers that recent
warming was mostly man-made.
Inconvenient Fact 31
Science is not consensus and consensus is not science.
145
Inconvenient Fact 32
More C0 2 => fewer droughts
Inconvenient Fact 33
Higher temperature => fewer droughts
Inconvenient Fact 34
Forest fires across the northern hemisphere are decreasing.
Inconvenient Fact 35
More C0 2 » C0 2 fertilization » more soil moisture » faster tree
growth » fewer forest fires
Inconvenient Fact 36
More C0 2 in the atmosphere means more food for everyone.
Inconvenient Fact 37
The Earth is becoming greener, not turning into desert.
Inconvenient Fact 38
Growing seasons are lengthening.
Inconvenient Fact 39
More C0 2 and warmer weather mean more world food production.
Inconvenient Fact 40
EPA: Heat waves are not becoming more frequent.
Inconvenient Fact 41
Extreme heat events are declining.
Inconvenient Fact 42
Cold kills far more people every year than heat.
Inconvenient Fact 43
Warmer weather means many fewer temperature-related deaths.
146
Inconvenient Fact 44
Warmer weather prevents millions of premature deaths each year.
Inconvenient Fact 45
More C0 2 and warmth mean shorter, less intense heat waves.
Inconvenient Fact 46
Number of tornadoes is declining.
Inconvenient Fact 47
The number of tornadoes in 2016 was the lowest on record.
Inconvenient Fact 48
Deaths from tornadoes are falling.
Inconvenient Fact 49
There has been no increase in frequency of hurricanes in recent
data.
Inconvenient Fact 50
We have seen 250 years of declining hurricane frequency.
Inconvenient Fact 51
No significant increase in hurricane intensity due to warming
Inconvenient Fact 52
The population of polar bears is growing.
Inconvenient Fact 53
There are more polar bears than we’ve had for 50 years.
Inconvenient Fact 54
Polar bears are thriving even where sea ice is diminishing.
Inconvenient Fact 55
There is no historic correlation between C0 2 and oceanic pH.
147
Inconvenient Fact 56
The oceans did not become acidic even at 15 times modern C0 2
levels.
Inconvenient Fact 57
Sea-level increase began >15,000 years ago.
Inconvenient Fact 58
Recent sea-level rise began 150 years before the increase in C0 2 .
Inconvenient Fact 59
Melting the northern polar ice cap would not increase sea level.
Inconvenient Fact 60
Most of Antarctica is cooling and gaining ice mass.
148
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